A Word About Nightshades

I've been looking over some of my old writing and found the following blogpost, originally published on "Functional Food 4 Thought" the blog of Atlanta Functional Medicine.  I realized it might be helpful information for those of us who lead with veggies, so am sharing it today.

A Word About Nightshades

Mmm -- a fresh garden harvest. Enjoy with caution, veggie-lovers!

I know, I was just telling you about how adding more fresh, organic vegetables to your diet will cure many ills, but as you clean up your act you may begin to notice subtle differences in how individual foods make you feel. A system laden with the sludge of dairy, sugars, white carbohydrates and processed foods will not be sensitive enough to notice these subtleties. A cleaner system is not addled and numb. The effects of foods are immediately apparent, not delayed as in the sluggish system of someone eating the processed diet. It behooves each of us to be observant diners -- to be present in the moment and understand the effects of our nourishment.

A few years ago I was a novice gardener, so I gravitated toward hardier plants -- the ones which seem to thrive on neglect and seldom get eaten by garden marauders. As I began to clean up my own diet, I noticed a certain uncomfortable feeling on my tongue when eating eggplants which were only lightly cooked. Then I began thinking about how the eggplants in the garden, unlike the green beans, weren't nibbled by critters -- not even a little bit. So I did some research.

Eggplants are part of the nightshade family, the members of which are poisonous in varying degrees! The nightshades contain alkaloids which taste bad to animals, thus ensuring the plants' survival. Obviously, these veggies do not contain enough "poison" to kill you, even if eaten in large quantities, but they do have enough to make you sick, if you have a sensitivity, or to exacerbate certain existing conditions. Cooking the vegetables thoroughly serves to break down many of the offending alkaloids. The effects of nightshade alkaloids vary from person to person. Generally they've been found to cause disturbances in nerve-muscle function, joint function and digestion. If you suffer from arthritis, try limiting your nightshade intake and see if you notice a difference. Besides eggplants, the nightshade family includes tomatoes, potatoes (not sweet potatoes, which aren't even related to potatoes), peppers, tobacco, morning glory and belladonna, among others. The amounts of alkaloids in the nightshades vary from species to species, the worst likely being belladonna which is deadly, and one of the least being the tomato. An interesting side note: Thomas Jefferson deemed the tomato, unknown at the time, the "poisonous love apple" since he noticed it was eschewed by native Americans.

Of course adding more vegetables to our diets is important for overall health. Today's post is about fine-tuning. Your doctors at Atlanta Functional Medicine are familiar with the effects of food allergies and sensitivities and can work with you personally to discover what's best for you, and then you can make an informed choice. Vegetables from the nightshade family may or may not be tolerable for your system. If you are able to tolerate them, they're still better than a slab of baby back ribs!

by Cheryl Salinas

Previously published at Functional Food 4 Thought

Happy

Ahhh! So that's what it feels like! I don't know how long it has been, probably not as long as it seems, but feeling happy like I do today is like a distant memory. It's amazing how we can somehow cope, and frame our challenges in a way that we can just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It's not that I have been unhappy, just more like a nervous wreck. Living with stress is a life sentence for mothers, but we need to understand that managing it is imperative to our health and well-being.

I'm not the best at stress-management, so the recent stress has, indeed, taken a toll. Long-time MLV readers might remember that, 18 months vegan, I had my first MRI ever which showed no additional MS plaques on my brain in two years! I really can only thank the vegan diet for this result, since nothing else had changed during the timeframe. But with the recent stress, I lost the use of my left hand for one morning -- something that has never happened before. The hand has come back, but is tingly most of the time.

Knowing how crucial stress-management is to my health, I do take certain steps which I believe have helped. Here they are:

• Go to bed as early as possible.
• Exercise almost every day.
• Eat greens every day - more than once if possible.
• Keep the "spa" channel playing on the stereo all day long (this helps the mood of all the others around here too, which further lowers my stress).
• Keep the Kindle charged and filled not only with"self-help" books, but also vegan and macrobiotic books, and most surprisingly, "escape" fiction (not trashy romance novels - I never liked those - just good fiction. It's such a relief to get lost in someone else's life. I just recently enjoyed "How to Be Good" by Nick Hornby) You may wonder, if I'm so stressed, where do I find the time to read? The answer -- in the middle of the night as I'm not sleeping because of my racing mind.
• Meditate -- so much easier said than done, and I'm not as regular with it as I should be, but everything is always better on days when it happens. Some days I don't know where to start, so a guided meditation is appreciated. My favorites are from "The Life Program" I put them on one of my hand-me-down ipods I got from the kids as they upgraded.

When I am stressed I have no appetite, so creativity in the kitchen goes away. Some days I am reduced to standing at the kitchen island, in front of a bag of dill-pickle flavored potato chips for sustenance. Those days are rough. Instead, if I can pull it together enough to feed body and soul, like I did last weekend, I can come up with something wonderful like the early autumn stew in the photo above. I simply cleaned out the crisper. I boiled a piece of kombu in filtered water and added five chopped cloves of garlic, a yellow onion, a sweet potato, four small organic carrots, a couple of organic celery stalks, a big handful of shredded kale, a can of garbanzo beans and about half a cup of dry orzo. I found a few grape tomatoes in my garden and threw those in too, and added a little organic veggie broth as the orzo swelled and made the mixture thick. Finally, once everything looked cooked, I turned off the heat, added some sherry and a couple of scallions. I squeezed a little lemon over each bowlful, which made it taste like sunshine, and we ate it in front of a crackling fire outdoors. Happy!

Today I can only be grateful for this happy feeling. Everything is not perfect, it never is, right? But it is fine, I am fine . . . no . . . blessed! I'm going out now to smile at everyone I see so I can spread the happy around. I hope you have a happy day too!

I Like Tempeh Now!

Look at this hearty, healthy, rustic panful! Inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz'"Smoky Tempeh & Greens Stew" from Appetite For Reduction, I actually followed a recipe instead of perusing it and doing whatever the heck I want in my usual, lazy pattern. I followed the recipe because I was working with an unfamiliar ingredient.

Heretofore, I've been under the impression that I am not a tempeh kind of girl. Accustomed to the lovely, bland, homogeneous nature of tofu, tempeh did not appeal to me the one time I attempted to cultivate a taste for it about a year ago. I had bought a shrink-wrapped portion of tempeh with no plan in mind, and cut into it and popped a chunk of it, cold and unadorned, into my mouth. Not knowing anything about tempeh at the time, I was put off by the slightly sour flavor of this fermented soybean product. I was not entirely sure I did not have a bad batch of it, so I am ashamed to say it went into the trash, and I resolved to stick to beans and the occasional tofu meal.

I'm so glad I finally bothered to actually follow Isa's recipe! This stew is positively delicious in an uber-wholesome way. So I am a big fan of tempeh now! Even more shocking, my omni-husband also enjoyed the stew. Knowing how my husband's psychology works, I am better off not asking him about whether he indulged in any tempeh chunks. He's more likely to eat "funky" vegan food if I keep it under the radar and just sneak it in there stealthily. So, I don't know if he ate any or not, and I don't really care. He liked the stew!

We ate the stew with some jasmine rice, which I know my daughter loves.

Some notes about my actually following a recipe:  Isa says the active time for this prep is 15 minutes and the total time is 45 minutes. I agree with the 45 minute figure for the actual cooking time, but only 15 minutes for the prep time? No ma'am! I spent at least half an hour chopping, but that may be because I didn't actually weigh my gigantic sheaf of collard greens, and I may have prepped much more than a pound of them. My collards were at least as large as the biggest Miss America congratulatory bouquet you can imagine. That's how we grow 'em down here in the deep south, I guess. No matter, as the greens cooked down, I was able to work all of them into the pot. Otherwise, I think most measurements matched the recipe's. I did use full-grown organic carrots instead of the baby ones (which aren't really babies anyway - they just carve 'em that way).

In shopping for smoked paprika, I had no luck. I went to the ethnic aisle first (I can call it that because my kids are ethnic) because the spices are soooo much cheaper than in the baking aisle.

There was only this regular paprika in the ethnic aisle, so I went to the expensive aisle in search of the smoked paprika. There was no smoked paprika in the expensive aisle either, so back to the ethnic aisle I went. The ethnic paprika cost $1.53 and the ethnic bay leaves cost $.59! You won't find any spices in the non-ethnic aisle for less than $3! Marketing -- pricing can be so random.  My ethnic spices did the trick, with the addition of a few drops of liquid smoke.

I love Isa's recipes and am grateful for this chance to expand my vegan ingredient repetoire.

This is Vegan Junk Food

If I were Catholic, I guess this would be my confessional. I've veered off track from my usual beans/greens/whole grains formula that normally keeps me in top form and at peace.

I guess it all started with our travels for the wedding, but then, back at home, we've struggled to create a new routine, in this "summer but not really" season. You see, my 17 year old son, who you may remember missed a lot of school last year due to chronic migraines, has luckily received three incompletes out of his 6 junior year classes (instead of failing the classes). This means he has until August 1 to finish the classes. He feels grateful for the extension, as do I, but being close to adulthood, he bristles at any attempt on our parts to create any sort of routine. He wants to do the work when he feels like it. Well, this won't work, so we have negotiated a settlement with him which involves various sleep schedules and accompanying consequences that he may choose from day to day according to how he feels. Recounting the details of the arrangement would be tedious. We figured out he needs at least 4 hours of work per day to meet his deadline. Hans has been very good at following the guidelines thus far, but the variable nature of the arrangement involves a watchful eye by me. I need to get up at night to make sure he is going to bed when he says he is. So I'm tired. And you thought it would get easier once they are older? Nope, just different problems.

Most of us vegans get clear signals from our bodies about what is needed to achieve balance. But if we ignore or misread the signals, they are of no benefit. I have been misreading my tired signals as cravings for carbs. Oh, you're right, I really knew better, I just wanted an excuse for some vegan junk food.

The photo above is a couple of lovely toasted cheese sandwiches (I'm still in my Anglophilia phase from the Royal wedding, so I will call them that instead of the American "grilled cheese"). The bread is a delicious sunflower seed bread and, yes, it is white flour, and I don't know if there are eggs in it or not (confession). The cheese is daiya -- non-dairy, made from tapioca. It is not animal fat but it is still fat. These were delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed the ten minutes it took to consume them, but then felt overstuffed and miserable for an hour.

Here is some more recent vegan junk food in which I've indulged:

Herbed smashed potatoes! Yum -- boiled potatoes, some peeled, some not, mashed with plenty of earth balance and tofutti sour cream, salt, pepper and a big handful of herbs from my garden -- in this case Italian parsley. White carbs again and plenty of vegan fat. The result? Pretty much the same as the toasted cheese -- ten minutes of joy and satiety, followed by an hour of discomfort, with no residual energy.

It occurs to me that my dietary rebellion mirrors my son's responsibility rebellion. But as our pendulums swing, equillibrium is what we ultimately crave. We know what to do to achieve it, and the rewards are much longer lasting.

Stylish Blogger Award!

Something pretty I made and ate a while back . . .

Sally Kitten at "Of the Kitten Kind" has bestowed the "Stylish Blogger Award" upon "A Midlife Vegan" among other blogs. I am honored!  I love Sally's blog. Her recipes are inventive and luscious (I featured her "Almond Parsnip Soup" on "A Midlife Vegan" once). Her photos are beautiful and artfully done, which is no surprise since Sally is also an artist -- there's a link to some of her amazing artwork on the blog. Besides the rich content of Sally's blog, I get a real kick from visiting because of Sally's positive, youthful exuberance. I always leave smiling and refreshed.

As a recipient of the Stylish Blogger Award, I need to provide seven facts about myself:

1. I have been vegan for a little over a year now. I provided details ad nauseum about this transition in a recent post "Happy V-Day to Me!" Suffice it to say, it was the right decision. I'm not going back.

2. I've not held a full-time job since 1993 when I was a Campaign Associate at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. My duties there included Events Planning, Fundraising and  Speech Writing. I was honored to work with remarkable people including survivors of the Holocaust. I used to give hardhat tours of the Museum's construction site to prospective donors. My husband and I moved to Detroit right before the Museum opened its doors to the public.

3. Since getting married in 1992, we have moved eight times. Cities have included Detroit, MI, Williamsburg, VA (back to my alma mater for a couple of years -- William and Mary - yeah!), Winston-Salem, NC, Fairfax VA, and Alpharetta GA. We have been planted here in Georgia for over ten years now.

4. Being a mother is the most fulfilling and most difficult thing I've ever done. I would not have missed it.

5. I love writing -- I've published some articles and have a book of short stories that is languishing on my hard drive since blogging is currently a better fit during this "drop everything" chapter of life with teenage kids.

6. I have ambitions for more schooling, maybe something in healthcare for my second chapter of employment. I'd love feedback about suggested courses of study from any of you with experience in this area.

7. I've been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis for over 15 years now. I have been giving myself injections daily for over ten years. The injections are not interferon, which I tried for a year before starting this "decoy" medicine. I think interferon is the devil and will not try it again under any circumstance. Integrative Medicine has been very helpful to me. The vegan diet has provided the most dramatic benefits.

Now I get to award ten more recipients of this coveted "Stylish Blogger Award". I will do so with the caveat that I have a feeling I've seen some of my favorites with this award already, So if you find yourselves "doubly awarded" don't feel the need to go through all the motions again, unless you want to!

I'm in a bit of a "branching out" phase of my veganism, and am loving learning more about specific nutritional approaches. One blog that is very intriguing to me of late is Lisa's "Raw on $10 a Day (Or Less!)" The content is so new and fresh to me that I had to run right out and buy a dehydrator! I'm officially inspired. But beyond the content, we have another artist here folks! The blog is gorgeous and meticulously styled and Lisa's actual artwork (link is on her blog) is ethereally beautiful. It positively transports. When I look at some of Lisa's pieces, I am compelled anew to pursue neglected dreams with a youthful vigor. Well done, Lisa.

Another blogger whose nutritional expertise is much appreciated is Dr. Joanne M. Williams at "Foods for Long Life". Dr. Joanne has been inspiring my cooking and attention to nutrition for quite some time. Thanks!

Debbie at "The Health Seekers Kitchen" is someone else with some nutritional expertise I'd like to recognize. Her healthy, creative recipes never disappoint and her photos are gorgeous! Though I've not personally met Debbie, she feels like a good friend through the blogwaves. Debbie is one of those I may have already seen as a "Stylish Blogger Award" recipient.

While we are still on the subject of nutrition, I'd like to feature someone whose work I've recently been enjoying, Ainslie from "Everyone Is Vegan". Ainslie is a nutritionist (forgive me, Ainslie, if I don't have your title just right). In any case, she sounds like she knows what she's doing. I always feel like I have learned something important about the vegan food I'm eating whenever I visit Ainslie's blog, and as a bonus I get to enjoy quirky clips from different sources that mean something to Ainslie. I remember one day, during my son's recent health crisis, being afforded a much-needed belly-laugh from a "30 Rock" clip posted by Ainslie on her blog. Ainslie's energy  is enjoyable in a blog format. Her irreverance is refreshing.

Speaking of irreverance, I LOVE "Vegan Burnout".  Shannon is amazing, she's just . . . anything I say won't do her justice. You've just got to read her for yourself.  She's awesome -- oh yeah, and her food is good too!

Trying not to veer off the subject of nutrition just yet, I do want to mention Vivaciousvegan at "Adventures of a NutritarianVegan in Midwestern America". I am absolutely positive that Vivacious recently received this award, but I need to count her as one of my most current inspirations. Besides a wealth of knowledge about nutrition beyond the scope of my own, Vivacious (who does have a name, I think it is Jennifer? -- I can no longer find it on her blog and my short-term memory loss is kicking in . . .) is inspiring to me as a fellow chronic-illness manager. Right after my diagnosis, many family members urged me to find a support group, but I intuitively knew that belonging to such a group would be the beginning of my demise. I employ a healthy dose of denial in my disease management. So, while my approach of "let it be as if it were not," has worked for me thus far, it does leave me with a deficit of identifiable associative personae. Vivacious' (Jennifer's?) blog allows me to step harmlessly for a moment into the experience of another with perhaps similar challenges (though our diseases are very different). Vivacious' upbeat attitude through it all is most healing to my soul. Thanks, Viv!

Talking soul-healing now, I must feature Jeri and David of "GOD'S DREAMS FOR ME in my Vegan Playground". These amazing people are wise, holy. When I visit I am always inspired and, in Jeri's words, "refreshed". This is another one I'm almost certain has received this award, and again, someone who feels like a friend, though I've never met her personally.

In the same genre of "inspiring cyber-friend" is, of course, Lindsay Wolf of "Kiss Me, I'm Vegan!" Lindsay's star shines brightly and her activism, beyond the scope of anything I am likely to accomplish until perhaps my next chapter in life, is infectious nevertheless.  Inspired!  (Yeah, you've probably gotten this award already too, huh?)

One of my earliest inspirations is Morgan at "Little House of Veggies". Before I learned how to cook for myself, "A Midlife Vegan" was one reinterpreted "Little House of Veggies" recipe after another! (though I did cite her!) Morgan is an amazing chef, her photos are beautiful and I predict she will go far wherever she puts her energy. She is a wonderful cyber-friend to me. Thanks Morgan! -- You continue to inspire!

Another blog I love lately is Stephanie's "Diary of a Frenzied Vegan". This girl has got the goods. Stephanie is a great cook and I've been eating a lot of her creations lately, albeit with my lazy spin upon them.

That's ten already, but since there are quite a few here who've already gotten the award (I think) I can mention a couple more who mean something to me:

Melissa at "Green Beans and Yam" -- Activism, young energy, spiritually and healthfully blooming -- an inspiring cyber-friend.

Sara at "Busy Vegan Mama" -- Great cook, visiting this blog transports me back to a lovely chapter of my own life, but Sara is doing it better through veganism. The cheeks on those babies!!

Hilary at {Plate+Simple} who has been on hiatus from blogging for an undisclosed exciting project, has nevertheless been an early and huge inspiration for me as a vegan. Plus, I love her rockin' haircut which I just copied. I'll post a new photo soon if I get one. Anyway, Hilary's blog archives are worth checking out if you haven't yet. Best of luck to you, Hilary, on your project, and if you can, come back to the blogging world -- we miss you!

I could go on and on. There are so many creative souls on the blogosphere who inspire daily. I'm grateful to honor just a few, and thanks, Sally, for the award!

Feeding the Crave

I love perusing recent posts of my favorite blogs. I enjoy the personalities of my fellow bloggers and am also continually inspired by their kitchen endeavors. Sometimes it's hard to remember from whence an inspiration has come, and usually I find myself changing a recipe due to my own laziness or to avoid another trip to the grocery store. I am not the most organized vegan.

Yesterday I knew my inspiration was from something I'd seen on Stephanie Leah's "Diary of a Frenzied Vegan" (http://omnivore-no-more.blogspot.com). I began working with a dish she had created with wild rice, butternut squash and an apple among other things. But then I realized I'd been eating a fair amount of rice lately and I really wanted red quinoa instead. Looking back, I realize I'd also been inspired by a quinoa dish on Stephanie's blog as well, and I sort of morphed the two very loosely.

This dish involved a lot more effort for me than I usually expend, but then wrestling with any raw winter squash without slicing myself is a guaranteed way to kill half an hour or so. Obviously I am not eating many winter squash, but then that's what makes this delicious panful so special -- it doesn't come around every day!

After successfully chopping the butternut into submission without losing a finger (maybe I just need a sharper knife?) I did enjoy the rest of the prep work for this amazing meal. I started by roasting the butternut and the apple on a parchment sheet at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, as Stephanie does, but otherwise I used up items in my crisper which were on their way to being not so crispy -- a carrot, a large garlic clove, two sad leeks (I removed the sad parts) a cup of red quinoa, some olive oil, a vegan bouillon cube, enough water to keep most of the quinoa moist, and then added at the end three well-chopped collard leaves, a large handful of cilantro and a spring onion. I obviously followed no recipe after roasting the squash and apple, so I would definitely direct you to the source -- Stephanie's recipe.

I really enjoy "shopping my own larder" and finding ways not to waste the food within it. The food in the above panful is truly what I am always dreaming of -- deeply-colored fresh veggies with nutrient-rich whole grains. I crave it all day long. I am eating it now for my "second breakfast" (a smoothie was my first, but looking at that photo I had to have it). The leftovers are delightful, cold out of the 'fridge!

I have to giggle when I realize that many of my omni-friends will take one look at the object of my desire and grimace. I guess I may not have been so hot for this panful of yum a year ago either. But now?  Obsessed!

Bioavailability

We are still in a season of lazy vegan eating around here as creativity is taking a sabbatical while my focus is necessarily upon matters other than food. I do feel rumblings of that old vegan mojo, however. I'm finding myself interested in learning more about nutrition and planning some fresh experiments when time is again mine.

When I was in Kroger looking for baby bok choy and hemp milk, I saw a little carton of these crunchy sprouts, comprised of adzuki beans, lentils and green peas. It is clear that these three sprout at different rates since the peas seem to be the most robustly sprouted and there is nary a sprout upon an adzuki. Still, the mix is different from anything I'd ever eaten and is very satisfying. The price tag was a bit hefty for a tiny little carton -- $2.79 or somesuch, but the purchase was worthwhile to me for educational and inspirational purposes. I bet, with a little research, I could cheaply sprout any manner of seeds.

Why sprout?  Well, I'm sure I will have more info on this topic after the aforementioned research, but I do already know that a sprouted seed is more bioavailable. In other words, the nutrition is more readily absorbed into the system and less of it is wasted. Also, once a seed is sprouted, the body treats it as more of a "plant food" than a starchy "seed". I look forward to learning more about this subject when I am afforded the time for a new project.

The photo above is of one of my lazy, simple lunches. It is a flatbread spread with spinach hummus and topped with arugula and the crunchy sprouts.

Here's another version of almost the same thing, in a different format:

In this case, instead of bread and hummus, I have cannelini beans, leftover steamed cauliflower, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and of blood orange olive oil. Otherwise, I again feature the arugula and crunchy sprouts.  Both meals were very agreeable and easy to throw together.

For you regular readers who may be interested -- We are nearing the end of my son's health crisis, I think. Today was his first day out. He drove his own truck and met us for lunch at Taco Mac (which now features a black bean chipotle burger btw! Yippee!) He was overjoyed to be out of the house without a headache. I am cautiously optimistic. If I can get him back to school on Monday I will know we are out of the woods. Thanks again for all your prayers and good wishes through it all. You are much appreciated.