veggie stir-fry

OK, so I haven't quite started on the whole vegan cookbook challenge thing (oops!), however, I did actually cook a REAL meal at home tonight! It was super easy, delicious and ridiculously healthy, not to mention gluten-free and vegan! So, I thought I'd share it with you. It took less than 30 minutes, cost less than $10 (and it even left me with plenty of left-overs), and requires minimal kitchen skill!

What you'll need

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 onion (sliced)
• 1 green bell pepper (sliced)
• 1 red bell pepper (sliced)
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• Liquid Aminos (or wheat-free soy sauce)
• agave nectar (optional)

Directions:

• First bring 2 1/2 cups water to a boil (add salt to taste), then stir in brown rice.
• Once it begins to boil again, reduce heat, cover and simmer until the rice has absorbed all of the water
• While the rice is boiling, heat a large skillet on med-high heat add a touch oil (just so the veggies won't stick)
• slice onion and add to heated skillet
• then, slice peppers and toss in with onions
• follow with the mushrooms and bean sprouts
• cook for about 5-10 minutes, stirring/tossing occasionally (be careful not to overcook...nothing worse than soggy veggies)
• add in some liquid aminos (or soy sauce) to taste...I probably use way too much!
• remove from heat
• makes 3-4 servings
• serve veggies on top of rice and enjoy!
• I like to top mine with a little agave nectar to give it that sweet savory sort of flavor. You can even stir in a 2 TBSP of natural chunky peanut butter for Thai inspired flavor! :)

My New Recipe Project

Many people ask me what I eat as a gluten-free vegan. It does become a little complicated and unconventional when you are unable to eat anything containing wheat, oats, barley, rye, beef, poultry, pork, eggs, dairy, or any other product made from an animal. Sometimes, I am even at a loss as to what to eat! I find that I have become increasingly bored with my current menu, and cooking at home rarely happens anymore.

Luckily, my amazing sister gave me a wonderful cookbook, The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O'Brien. It contains 150 interesting and yummy recipes that are perfectly suited for my diet. It has given me some new motivation to cook, really cook, at home and make healthy, delicious, and exciting recipes for me and my girls. My goal is to test each of the new recipes out and share them with you. Then, maybe you can try them out for yourself, or at least find some inspiration to try to incorporate some vegetarian meals into your diet.

Go Veggie! for the planet

Everyone can pretty much guess that being a vegetarian is good for you health, but for the planet? Definitely! It affects more than you may realize. According to a study conducted by the United Nations in 2006, "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Chooseveg.com breaks it down perfectly into 4 major categories: conservation, extinction, pollution, and global warming.

Meat production in the United States is very inefficient and wasteful of our natural resources. Just think of all the crops that are simply produced to feed the animals that we are only raising to kill (I'll go into detail on that aspect in my ethics portion) so that we can eat them. A person living mostly on animal protein requires 10 times more land to produce food than someone living on vegetable proteins (wikipedia). So, that also means 10 times as much water is needed for that land. As a matter of fact, of all of the water used for any purpose in the US, more than half is used for livestock production. Just think about how much of the land and its resources we could conserve. Such an unnecessary waste. There is also a massive use of fossil fuels used to run all of the machinery now used to "raise" and "produce" livestock. Now, there are more energy efficient ways to produce meat using a natural-grazing method. The natural-grazing method is pretty much how we like to picture meat production...cows roaming free on a grassy hill...but that is not the reality anymore.

According to United States Department of Agriculture, in 1997, there were 1,315,051 farms that carried livestock.  That's crazy! Just imagine the acreage need for all of those farms to exist. How many forest were chopped down to make room for the fields needed to provide for all of this livestock? However, it is not just the trees we are losing, but also the countless animals, insects, and other plant life that were occupying that forest. The United Nations reports that "ranching-induced deforestation is one of the main reasons for the loss of plant and animal species in tropical rain forests." Think about it, the rain forests are being destroyed in order to clear land for cattle grazing, so we can over-indulge on double cheeseburgers and 16 oz steaks.

Then, there's the poo...seriously, the run-off from the farms is polluting our water making it toxic in some cases. The manure also produces methane gas, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide and releases it into the air. (Not to mention the amount of chemical fertilizers used on the crops grown to feed the cattle.) Methane gas, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are some of the most destructive gases in our air today and they are being produced at an alarming rate due to the incredible number of livestock needed to keep up with the high demands for meat.

Now, combine the effects of wasteful production, fewer forests, and higher levels of toxic gases and what do you get...global warming. In 2006, the United Nations reported that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined! So, maybe we should carpool AND put down the cheeseburger to reduce the effects of global warming!

Let's take care of this gorgeous planet God made for us! Reduce, reuse, and recycle...and Go Veggie!!!

Go Veggie!: for health

One of the things I am passionate about, is being a vegetarian. Its always frustrating when people find out I am a vegetarian and they ask me why, expecting a simple answer. However, my reasons are countless and complex, so I am going to cover this in a  three part series of sorts: health, environment, and ethics. They are all so closely tied together though.

First, we will start for health. At my heaviest, I weighed about 230 lbs. I was constantly starting fad diets, then failing them because they were impossible, then feeling more like a failure, and gaining more weight. What a wonderful cycle we are creating for young girls in America to follow! I remember trying the Adkins Diet and it worked for a while. I lost 30 pounds eating a pound of bacon for breakfast every morning! That's when I began viewing meat a little differently. The whole cooking process always grossed me out: blood, bones, skin, and the random feather in my chicken wing...ugh! Now granted, I was the kid that put a dozen eggs in the oven trying to incubate them. I've always had a heart for animals.

The yo-yo dieting continued for many years. Then while in college, I finally wanted to be healthier instead of skinnier. I began looking into the foods we eat and how our bodies process them, and I realized that it is called junk food for a reason! The foods that many Americans eat are completely void of any nutritional value, therefore, we are obese yet still malnourished. How sad is that?!  

God created us. He made these bodies just for us. A complex system of bones, muscles, neurons, cells all working perfectly together. Now say someone bought you a brand new Mercedes (I'd personally trade it in for a van that runs on veggie oil, but that's another topic) and you took it to the gas station and filled the tank up with water? The tank is full, but how well do you think that Mercedes is going to run? Just like the human body and junk food! We are destroying ourselves! So that got me thinking about how did God create us to eat? Well, Adam and Eve were vegetarians until they were kicked out of the garden. So I started doing some research about our bodies and meat. There is tons of research that proves the fact that humans are not designed to be carnivores. Just look at our teeth, our nails, even the acidity in our stomachs and the length of our intestines (GoVeg.com has a great article about this). Also, our bodies are designed to break down fruits and vegetables and use every bit of them as fuel, and yet those are the very staples that are completely missing from some Americans diets. Once again, our bodies just weren't designed to break down all of those saturated fats. Medical studies prove that a vegetarian diet greatly reduces the risk for cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney stones, gallstones, and even osteoporosis. A meat free diet has also been shown to reverse diabetes and asthma. Read this article for details about each one of these. There is also the issue of growth hormones and other chemical agents involved with eating meet, but I'll go into detail about that when I discuss how it effects our environment.

Once I began eating vegetarian, I was hooked! I feel so much better. It's hard to explain, but my insides really feel cleaner! It's so much easier than most people may think. There are a ton of yummy and interesting recipes out there! One of my personal favorites, Ultimate Veggie Lasagna, I shared on naturallychicmama. Check it out here!

My girlies are not exactly vegetarian. Our house is vegetarian. When we are out or when they are at their dad's I let them choose what they want to eat. It is one of my goals to have them on a completely vegetarian diet by the end of the year. And yes, it is perfectly safe for them. This is a great article explaining why.

There are so many interesting reasons to become a vegetarian, I'll discuss environment and ethics later. But remember, one of my main goals is to love everyone no matter what! I am not trying to convince anyone that they have to stop eating meat. I am not offended by the rack of ribs you are eating. I just want to open up to some what they might not know much about...and maybe help the planet, your health, and those baby chickens along the way! :)