Easy Vegan Asian Stir Fry [Oil-Free]

Easy Vegan Asian Stir Fry PinThis Easy Vegan Asian Stir Fry that’s oil-free is one of our staple recipes. We eat this one usually once and sometimes twice per week. We typically serve it over healthy brown rice, but sometimes we eat it plain or over some boiled yellow potatoes.

We almost always have the main ingredients on-hand: broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, mushrooms, onions, red cabbage and garlic. But feel free to use whatever you have on-hand or need to use before it goes bad, like green peas, snap-peas, carrots, sprouts, spinach, etc. Be creative!

This recipe has lots of protein, fiber, iron and enough vitamin C for 3 days RDV. With the soy sauce and salt, it’s a little high in sodium, so feel free to skip the salt and/or use low sodium soy sauce.

Like most of our recipes nowadays, we don’t use any oil in this steam fry. Without the rice, this recipe only has 155 calories, but add 1 tbsp of olive oil and you nearly double that. There’s simply no need to add all those extra calories from a liquid that’s 100% processed refined fat. Besides, lots of evidence suggests oil is “The Vegan Killer.”

Instead, we sauté using our homemade Easy Vegetable Broth from Scraps. It doesn’t add many calories, but it does add a lot of delicious flavor.

Since this recipe is so low in calories, but high in nutrient density, it’s a great weight loss recipe. Skip the brown rice and eat it plain to reduce the calories even more.

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.

Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl

Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl PinThis Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl recipe was inspired by a trip to a plant-based restaurant in Cuenca, Ecuador. It’s one of our favorite restaurants in Cuenca and they have several Buddha Bowls on their menu.

The co-owner and chef, Paul, backpacked throughout South America and ended up in Montevideo, Uruguay where he got a job as a chef in a plant-based restaurant. He returned to Cuenca with one of his co-workers and they opened their own plant-based restaurant called Café Libre. It’s what I would call gourmet vegan food (except for a couple of items that contain eggs).

Not only is the food delicious, it’s also presented in a way that is sure to draw your phone from your pocket so you can take a picture and share it with your friends on Facebook. It’s that good!

This Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl recipe is my own creation, made with some of my favorite ingredients and spices. Amelia usually makes our new recipes, but she put me in charge of the Buddha bowls since I love them so much.

We had some cauliflower that needed to be used so that’s where I started. Paul has a chickpea Buddha Bowl on the Café Libre menu and we had a can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) in the cupboard so that was ingredient number two.

We always have onions, garlic and chili peppers on hand so those were natural choices. I also like to add mushrooms for their chewy texture. Baby bellas are our favorite type and we usually have some of those in the fridge.

Swiss chard is a very nutritious dark leafy green, and recipes like this are a good way to add dark leafy greens to your diet. Kale, spinach or a combination would also be great. You could also skip the swiss chard and pair this with a dark leafy green Hearty Side Salad or a low calorie Spinach Salad.

Most of the time, we sauté with vegetable broth to reduce the calories (1 tablespoon has 120 calories) and also because oil isn’t a whole food. There is also a lot of evidence that oil may be as bad for our health as any other fatty food. Dr. Michael Greger thinks of “oil as the table sugar of the fat kingdom” and Mic the Vegan calls it the Vegan Killer.

From a calorie perspective alone, we think it’s worth avoiding oil if possible. And there’s absolutely no need to sauté with oil when steam frying with vegetable broth (or vegetable bouillon or water or wine) works just as well.

The remaining ingredients give the mixture its flavor and a lot of extra nutritional benefits. Lime is loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants. Apple cider vinegar has been shown to help with weight loss, turmeric has been shown to fight cancer and spices in general are loaded with antioxidants that have been shown to fight aging and all sorts of cancers.

I like a little sweetness to go with my spicy so I added some agave. Normally I would use maple syrup, but we didn’t have any (sniff sniff). You can skip this to reduce the calories and the liquid sugar. You can also skip the salt if that’s a concern (especially if you have high blood pressure or kidney disease), but it helps bring out the other flavors.

This is a great one-pot lunch recipe that you can make ahead of time and eat it cold or heat it up the next day. I made this a two serving recipe, but if you serve it over 3/4 cup of brown rice, you can get 4 servings out of it.

This Cauliflower Chickpea Buddha Bowl recipe is a nutrition powerhouse that’s loaded with healthy sources of protein, carbs and fat. It’ll keep you satisfied and powered until dinner. Enjoy!

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 Shepards Pie

Vegan Shepards Pie PinFeatured On NutritionStudies.org…

This Vegan Shepards Pie Recipe is a savory and satisfying dish for a special occasion or Sunday dinner. It pairs well with green beans or roasted broccoli.

Timing is important so the lentil mixture and Vegan Mashed Potatoes are finished at about the same time. When you’re ready to bake the Shepards Pie, it works best if all the ingredients are close to the same temperature.

You can also prepare the ingredients ahead of time and refrigerate until you’re ready to bake it. You’ll need to remove the casserole dish from the refrigerator about an hour before you’re ready to bake to let it warm up a little. That makes this a perfect dish to take to a friends house.

For even more flavor, top it with some Vegan Brown Gravy.

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 Stuffed Eggplant

Vegan Stuffed Eggplant PinAmelia whipped up this Vegan Stuffed Eggplant for us as a low calorie dinner made from veggies we had in the fridge. We wanted to drop a few pounds so she’s been making us some delicious low calorie meals made mostly of fresh veggies, and this is one of my favorites!

Carving out the eggplant is the hardest part of this easy meal. I used a curved grapefruit knife to remove the flesh and that seemed to work well. Then I sliced it up to go with the other veggies that Amelia had prepared.

If you want to lose weight, this is a great recipe. It’s filling with all the fibrous veggies, but very low calorie. In fact, it only has about 140 calories so you can even serve this as a side dish with a Portobello Mushroom Steak. It would also be a really good lunch on a low-cal day or served with a delicious baked or boiled potato.

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.

Lemony Spring Peas and Zucchini

Lemony Spring Peas and Zucchini PinThis Lemony Spring Peas and Zucchini recipe is a fresh and delicious Amelia special. She concocted this recipe from all of our favorite ingredients: zucchini, garbanzo beans, peas, onion and mushrooms. Adding the Lemon Sauce recipe adapted from the Minimalist Baker makes it all lemony and flavorful.

We tried to spiralize our zucchini, but the spiralizer we bought doesn’t work very well. It works ok for slicing, but the spiralizing blade did a better job of cutting my thumb than the zucchini. As long as the zucchini is thinly sliced, it works just as well.

If you’re using frozen peas, be sure to thaw them first or they won’t cook at the same rate as everything else.

You can substitute spaghetti squash or quinoa for the brown rice. You can also serve it without the rice and pair it with some Balsamic Marinated Baked Tofu, Healthy Butternut Squash or BBQ Tempeh.

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.

Potato and Cabbage Soup

Potato and Cabbage Soup PinThis delicious Potato and Cabbage Soup was created from spare veggies we had lying around our refrigerator. At only 126 calories for roughly 2 cups, this also makes a great weight-loss recipe.

One of Amelia’s pet peeves is the sheer volume of broccoli stalk that comes on a relatively small head of broccoli. For years, we’ve been throwing the stalks in the trash even though they account for almost 70% of the weight charged by the grocery store.

We’re really striving to be less wasteful, so we’ve been figuring out how to eat the parts of veggies we’ve been throwing away, like broccoli stalks and Beet Greens. That’s why Amelia invented this recipe…mainly to use the broccoli stalks we didn’t want to waste.

She cut the tough nubs off the stalk, chopped it up into small pieces and threw them in this tasty Potato and Cabbage Soup. Since broccoli stalks have the same nutritional content as broccoli florets, we’ve been throwing away most of the broccoli’s nutrition! But not anymore!

We also use our spare veggies to make Easy Vegetable Broth from Scraps. That recipe puts our veggie scraps to good use and saves us at least $20/month in store-bought veggie broth.

This recipe is very low calorie, but pretty filling. However, you should still pair it with a Hearty Side Salad, some Steamed Broccoli or a slice of Whole-Grain Bread.

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 Mushroom Risotto with Chia Seeds

Vegan Mushroom Risotto Chia Seed PinThis Vegan Mushroom Risotto with Chia Seeds recipe is a decadent and filling treat. It pairs well with a Hearty Side Salad, Roasted Asparagus, Steamed Broccoli or anything green to add some color to your rich and creamy risotto.

Risotto is a traditional dish from Northern Italy made with Arborio rice. This type of rice is starchier than regular white rice, and the starch is released while cooking, giving the dish its creamy texture. Don’t use regular rice for this recipe or it won’t come out right.

Chia Seeds are a good source of Omega 3 so we try to mix them in whenever we can. According to Dr. Greger, a tablespoon of chia seeds or flax seeds is all you need to get your daily dose of Omega 3 fatty acids (sans saturated fat, cholesterol and mercury found in the most recommended source of Omega 3’s: fish). This recipe gets you halfway to your daily amount. We also like to throw half a tbsp of flax meal in our Rolled Oats Breakfast, too.

Note: Remember to soak your cashews ahead of time so your Vegan Cashew Cream is ready when your risotto is finished.

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 Polenta with Mushrooms and Lentils

Vegan Polenta PinThis Vegan Polenta with Mushrooms and Lentils recipe is colorful, delicious and filling. The sweetness of the polenta combines nicely with the savory mushrooms and tangy balsamic reduction. It’s a party for your taste buds!

While it tastes great, it’s very low calorie so one serving doesn’t make a meal. It has 7 grams of fiber and 8 grams of protein, but only 104 calories per serving. That means you’ll need to eat two servings, or pair it with something else like Oven Roasted Red Potatoes and a Side Salad.

This recipe makes 12 servings. You can cut the ingredients in half to avoid having too many leftovers.

If you have leftover polenta, it makes a great breakfast topped with some fruit preserves and served with a slice of whole grain toast with cashew butter.

Vegan Polenta with Mushrooms and Lentils Instructional Video

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.