Vegan Curry Vegetables

Vegan Curry Vegetables PinThis Vegan Curry Vegetables recipe was inspired by a recipe in “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. After I found out my cholesterol was still high after eating a plant-based diet for more than 2 years, I realized vegans can still get heart disease. Dr. Esselstyn’s book had a lot of great advice backed by legitimate research, as well as lots of delicious sounding recipes.

Amelia put me in charge of this one since I found it. I made it the first time following the recipe in the book pretty much exactly, but I thought it lacked some depth of flavor so I modified it the second time around.

Most of Dr. Esselstyn’s study patients were suffering from severe heart disease, so most of the recipes in the book don’t use any salt. Amelia and I both have low blood pressure, so we’re not afraid to use a little salt in our recipes. You can skip the salt if that’s a concern for you.

In addition to salt, I added black pepper and tomato sauce. We eat at an Indian restaurant here in Cuenca, Ecuador called Namaste India and they use tomato in a lot of their curry dishes. It gives it a rich, tangy flavor that we really like.

The jarred tomato sauce we get here in Ecuador is very thick. It’s closer in consistency to tomato paste so you may need to adjust the amount of tomato sauce depending on how thick it is and your taste preference.

We used broccoli and cauliflower in our recipe, but it would be great with some yellow potatoes, too. Some fresh spinach would also be great either blended up in the sauce or added to the skillet during cooking.

This is a great one-dish recipe, but you could also eat it with some naan bread or a side salad.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Broccoli Chickpea Chipotle Buddha Bowl

Broccoli Chickpea Chipotle Buddha Bowl PinThis Broccoli Chickpea Chipotle Buddha Bowl is easy, fast, oil-free, low-calorie, nutritious and delicious. It’s a great recipe if you’re in a hurry and watching your calories.

Since I stepped up my gym workouts, I’ve been wanting a high protein lunch that’s fast and easy to prepare. I made this one before my workout so it was ready when I got back from the gym. If I don’t plan ahead like this, I find myself eating the first thing I see when I get home instead of the best thing for a post-workout meal.

This is the second Buddha Bowl I’ve created after Amelia encouraged me to take on this Buddha Bowl project. The last one was the Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl and it was also amazing!

Most Buddha Bowls are neatly arranged with each ingredient placed separately in the bowl over rice, quinoa, barley, greens, etc. But it takes a lot more time (and pots) to prepare everything individually and assemble them when everything is done. I prefer the one-pot variety to save time and generate fewer dirty dishes. Maybe my next one will follow the rules…but I’m not much of a rule follower…

I created this Buddha Bowl with the ingredients we had on hand. We always have onions and garlic, but today we also had broccoli and red cabbage. They add a lot of color and antioxidants.

Red cabbage is one of the best foods you can eat for preventing and fighting cancer. The brighter color a food is, the more antioxidants it has. That means red cabbage has more than green cabbage. Plus, I like the taste of red cabbage better than green, although both are delicious in the right recipe.

I like to sauté my onions and garlic separately so they get a little extra tender, but you can probably put everything in the pot at the same time and cook it all together. That’ll make it a little easier.

Steam frying is the key to sauteing veggies without oil. You need to use a generous amount of vegetable broth, and cover the pan so the moisture doesn’t evaporate. We try to cook without oil as much as possible, and there’s really no need to use it when you’re sauteing veggies. It just adds a lot more calories without much other benefit.

Despite the common myth, your body does not need fat from processed oils. You get all the fat you need from unprocessed plants. Oils may even contribute to heart disease and several kinds of cancer.

If you don’t have any chipotle seasoning on hand, you can swap that out for chili powder or some spicy Thai hot sauce.

You can eat this dish without the brown rice…it’ll just decrease the number of servings. Personally, I love brown rice, and it’s far better for you than white rice. Brown rice has been shown to help with weight loss and type 2 diabetes, while white rice can make both of those worse.

However you decide to prepare this Broccoli Chickpea Chipotle Buddha Bowl recipe, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the variety of tastes, textures and colors. Let us know how it turned out in the comments below!

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Broccoli Mushroom Stir Fry

Broccoli Mushroom Stir Fry PinAmelia whipped up this delicious oil-free Broccoli Mushroom Stir Fry recipe so we could use some shiitake mushrooms we found on sale. Since they’re usually so expensive, we rarely buy them, but we love them oh so much! If you can’t find any that are affordable, you can just use whatever mushrooms you have available.

We used a spicy Chinese red chili sauce to give the recipe a little extra spice. Feel free to use your favorite spicy hot sauce or try different ones.

Based on recommendations from some of our favorite nutrition doctors, we try to avoid oil whenever possible, even olive and coconut oil. While oil does lend a richness to food, its long-term harmful effects to our arteries and the weight gain associated with such a dense source of calories sour the taste a bit.

That’s why most of our stir fry recipes use vegetable broth instead of oil to “steam fry” our veggies. The key is to cover the pot between stirs to trap the moisture so the veggie broth doesn’t evaporate and your veggies don’t dry out.

This is a good one dish recipe, but you can also serve it with some delicious Vegan Miso Soup.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Vegan Broccoli Soup

Vegan Broccoli Soup PinBroccoli is one of our favorite veggies, and we created this Vegan Broccoli Soup so we can eat more of it! At only 75 calories per serving with 5 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber and 116% of your daily Vitamin C, it’s also a nutritional powerhouse!

You can make this recipe with 2 small heads of broccoli or one big head. Since you’re going to blend the ingredients, you can use the broccoli stalks, too. It’s a good use for them so they don’t go to waste. You can also save them for your homemade Easy Vegetable Broth from Scraps. Set aside 2 cups of the broccoli florets for garnish to give your soup a little more visual appeal and texture.

We used unsweetened almond milk, but feel free to use your favorite non-dairy milk. This gives the soup a creamier texture.

Our recipes are very flavorful…sometimes too flavorful for tender palettes. We used cayenne pepper to spice it up a little, but you can skip that if you want. You can also reduce or eliminate the salt if you’re avoiding it.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Teriyaki Tofu Stir Fry

Teriyaki Tofu Stir Fry PinThis Teriyaki Tofu Stir Fry recipe is filling, nutritious and satisfying. The teriyaki gives it a delicious sweetness and the soy sauce makes it savory. It’ll surely be a favorite recipe for your standard rotation.

There are a lot of myths and misinformation about soy and tofu floating around, thanks to the dairy industry. When they first noticed soy milk carving out a chunk of their dairy profits, they launched an all-out assault on soy to stop the hemorrhaging. Thankfully, it hasn’t worked and soy continues to edge out dairy and other unhealthy animal sources of protein.

Despite the false, unsupported claims made by the dairy industry in their soulless and arguably criminal attack on soy, according to Dr. Michael Greger, author of the bestselling book How Not To Die, “Soy seems to lower breast cancer risk, an antiestrogenic effect, but can also help reduce menopausal hot-flash symptoms, a proestrogenic effect…. Overall, researchers have found that women diagnosed with breast cancer who ate the most soy lived significantly longer and had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer recurrence than those who ate less.” [source]

Organic tofu is a healthy source of protein that has been consumed by the longest living humans for thousands of years. It’s time to put the anti-tofu movement to rest and embrace this nutritious food.

This recipe uses a little oil to make the tofu crispy, but you can replace that with vegetable broth if you eat an oil-free diet. Add some sesame seeds to the broth for a little natural oil that’ll be released during cooking.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Vegan Stir Fry

Vegan Stir FryAmelia cooked this Vegan Stir Fry about 8 times before she was happy with its flavor and veg composition. This one is all hers and it’s delicious!

We used fresh ingredients in this recipe, but if you’re in a hurry or hate chopping up a bunch of veggies, you can use a variety of frozen veggies or a package of mixed veggies. We use frozen mixed veggies quite a bit for this recipe, especially when we’re short on time.

I prefer eating it over brown rice, as this recipe calls for. But we also like it over Tofu Shirataki Spaghetti Noodles, spaghetti squash and spiralized zucchini. Amelia made it a lot, so we tried it with a lot of different things.

Amelia cooks this recipe in a skillet over medium heat covered to keep the veggie broth from evaporating too quickly. If you’re using a wok, the cook time will be less so keep that in mind.

If you want to make this gluten-free, substitute the seitan with sliced mushrooms. That’ll keep it a similar color and texture.

This recipe originally used a teaspoon of sesame oil, but since we’re not eating oil anymore, we removed it. You can add some sesame seeds to this dish to get a similar flavor. It’s a good idea to slightly toast them in a skillet before adding them to your recipe to release the oils and flavors.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Broccoli Salad

Broccoli Salad PinThis Oil-Free Broccoli Salad is one of Amelia’s all-time favorites and now it’s one of mine too. It certainly fits Amelia’s fresh and delicious requirements, but it’s also nutritious. It has 4 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein and 161% of your RDA of Vitamin C.

Broccoli is considered by many to be a superfood. A controversial term, I know, but if there is such a thing, broccoli would be it. According to Dr. Greger, “Broccoli can be considered a dark green leafy vegetable, and may help lower the risk of mouth throat, lung, breast, ovarian, endometrial, cervical, and prostate cancers. Raw broccoli specifically may also help bladder cancer survival. Broccoli may even protect against DNA damage, affect gene expression, and boost liver function.”

Broccoli is best consumed raw or lightly steamed to maximize the nutrient value. We like to lightly steam the broccoli because we don’t like it as much raw. Plus, steaming brings out the bright green chlorophyll colors!

This cruciferous vegetable is also loaded with sulforaphane, which is an important phytonutrient that has been shown to help prevent and fight several forms of cancer. However, the sulforaphane appears to be deactivated by cooking unless you chop the broccoli into small pieces about 40 minutes before cooking.

Broccoli Salad

That requires a little extra planning, but it’s not difficult. You can chop the broccoli during your fruit and veggie prep and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to make it, or just chop it up about 40 minutes or so before you want to start cooking and leave it on the cutting board until you’re ready.

Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage and brussels sprouts are potent immunity boosting and cancer fighting foods so it’s a good idea to consume a least some of them every day. We put kale in our Easy Garden Salad, and broccoli would be a nice addition to that recipe, too.

If you have a discerning eye, you may notice that we used walnuts instead of pecans for our photos. We prefer pecans in this recipe, but we haven’t been able to find any here in Ecuador. Plus, walnuts are very affordable here compared to most other nuts, so we eat them far more often. Feel free to use your favorite unsalted, raw or dry-roasted nuts in this recipe.

We love this Broccoli Salad on a hot summer day with fresh broccoli and tomatoes, but it’s good all year round. We generally eat it as a side dish with something like a Vegan Lentil Burger, but it’s great as a lunch meal with a slice of bread or a small bowl of White Bean Soup followed up with some fresh fruit.

Broccoli Salad Cooking Video

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If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Steamed Broccoli

Steamed BroccoliSteamed broccoli is a staple in the vegan diet, and it’s super fast and easy to make. Each serving of this recipe has only 64 calories, but packs in 5 grams of fiber, 5 grams of protein and a whopping 275% of your RDV for Vitamin C. A lot of that comes from the lemon juice, which is very high in Vitamin C.

Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable along with kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, cabbage, collard greens, rutabaga and turnips. These veggies are packed with nutrition but low on calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, stock up on these veggies and eat them as much as you can.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Roasted Broccoli with Garlic and Lemon Juice

Roasted BroccoliThis Roasted Broccoli is a quick and easy way to make broccoli taste great. It only takes a few minutes to prepare and broccoli is a great source of vital nutrients like fiber, protein and Vitamin A.

I’m a big fan of broccoli. I like it raw, steamed, in soup…you name it. But this Roasted Broccoli with Garlic and Lemon Juice recipe is by far my favorite. I could sit on the sofa and eat those little crispy florets like potato chips!

We tried cutting out the oil and just using vegetable broth, but they didn’t taste nearly as good. Plus, they didn’t have the crispiness that we like, so we decided to leave the oil. Each serving still only has 128 calories. Using aquafaba may work in place of oil, but we haven’t tried that yet. Let us know if you do!

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Baked Tempeh and Broccoli

Baked Tempeh and Broccoli PinThis Baked Tempeh and Broccoli recipe is a colorful, healthy plant-based meal with ample leftovers for busy weekday meals. It’s somewhat like a stir fry in it’s look and texture, but you bake it in the oven instead of in a wok or on the stove.

Tempeh is a minimally processed soy product that’s also high in protein. Each serving for this recipe has 11 grams of fiber, 15 grams of protein, 155% RDV of Vitamin A, 126% Vitamin C and 19% Iron. That’s a lot of nutrition for 299 calories making this a great weight loss recipe.

We put the Baked Tempeh and Broccoli over brown rice, but you could eat it plain without rice, with white steamed rice, or put it over spaghetti squash to cut down on the carbs and calories.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.