Coconut Mung Beans with Sweet Potato

1 cup split peeled mung beans, rinsed*
1/2 T oil
2 pinches black mustard seeds
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 Tbsp curry powder
1/2-1 tsp salt (to taste)
1 can Rotel diced tomatoes with chiles
1 can coconut milk
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced

Cook the mung beans in saucepan with 3 or 4 cups water until beans are very tender, approximately 15-20 minutes. Mung beans cook quickly. Don't let them burn.

Microwave sweet potato in a bowl with a couple tablespoons of water about 4 minutes, until tender. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat oil in large nonstick skillet. Add mustard seeds. When they pop, add onion, and saute a few minutes until soft. Add bell pepper, garlic, and ginger. Saute about 5 minutes. Add cumin, coriander, tumeric, and curry powder. Cook and stir a minute to toast spices. Add tomatoes; cook and stir a couple minutes. Stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and add mung beans, stirring to combine. Add cooked sweet potato and salt. Cover and simmer 20 minutes. If needed, stir in water to thin.

Serve over rice. On the side, I served summer squash sauteed with garlic.

You could also eat this as soup. This is mild and has excellent flavor. For additional heat you could add Indian chili powder, red pepper flakes or cayenne with the spices, or add fresh hot chiles with the bell pepper. Or you could season with pepper sauce at the table.

*I've made a similar dish using red lentils instead of mung beans.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four

I don't know who David Kramer is, but he's wrong about potatoes. In a footnote on one of his posts on government dietary advice, he writes:

"¹Potatoes are very fattening. How does this environmentally-"correct" food recommendation jibe with the Brits' former study claiming that obesity causes global warming?"


Potatoes are fattening? I think not. Perhaps he should do a little more research. He can start with Dr. McDougall's March 2009 newsletter where Dr. McDougall writes:

"Most people are completely backwards about the diet that results in health and an attractive appearance. They learn, "Don’t eat starches, because rice turns to sugar, which turns to fat, making you gain weight." If this mantra were true then there would be an epidemic of obesity among the 1.73 billion Asians living on rice-based diets. Confirming this truth, after moving west and replacing their starch with "high-protein" foods, then people from Japan and the Philippines would become trimmer and healthier looking. Is that what you see? "Potatoes are fattening." If true, then why during the 2000 McDougall Adventure trip to Peru, a country where common potatoes are the staple food, were the residents so trim and strong looking? We did see a few overweight people on this trip. The "chubby ones" were the waiters and chefs serving tourists their favorite meat and cheese dishes, and obviously sampling the menu.

"Let’s look together at a globe of the Earth and identify the populations of people who look the youngest, healthiest, and trimmest. Those living in Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines stand out. Their diet is mostly rice with some vegetables. In rural Mexico we will find beautiful people eating corn, beans, and squash. No one is overweight or on a diet there. The men, women and children of central New Guinea are nourished almost entirely by sweet potatoes. These people have no need for Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. Worldwide, populations with the highest consumption of starch are the trimmest and fittest.1 Learn about the health of these trim people and you will discover that they also have extremely low rates of diabetes, arthritis, gallbladder disease, constipation, indigestion, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon."


Sure, many people don't want to hear unsolicited dietary advice, especially from government which rarely gets anything right, but that doesn't mean the dietary advice is necessarily wrong. Besides, lamb tastes like wet dog smells. Blech.

Cartoon Time

Peanut Patties

My camera is still dead, but I wanted to share these patties. Serve the patties drizzled with your favorite peanut sauce or other favorite sauce. I used Vegan Dad's peanut sauce recipe, slightly modified. (Less chile-garlic sauce and a tad less peanut butter. I used soy milk and added a bit of flaked coconut.) The patties have a bit of a bite from the jalapeno. I served these with rice and steamed broccoli.



Kari's Peanut Patties (about 9 patties)

1/2 cup roasted peanuts
1 tsp canola oil (or a bit of water)
1 small onion, diced small
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 large carrot, peeled and grated
2 stalks celery, diced small
1 cup mushrooms, cleaned and chopped small (2 portobellos)
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
1 Tbsp mirin
1 pkg (14-oz) firm tofu, frozen and thawed, pressed and crumbled
1 cup oat bran
1/4 to 1/2 cup vegetable broth, as needed
3 Tbsp sweet potato powder (potato flour)
2 Tbsp minced cilantro
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp vegetarian mushroom oil
1/8 tsp ground ginger
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Grind the peanuts into a coarse meal using a food processor or spice/coffee grinder. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
Sauté vegetables in the canola oil (or water) until soft. Add mirin and cook off a minute or so. Cool slightly and add to the large mixing bowl along with all the remaining ingredients. Mix and mash together well, adding only as much vegetable broth as needed to create a moist pattie that holds together but isn't runny. Add more potato powder if the mixture seems too wet.
Shape mixture into patties using 1/3-cup measure. Cook patties in lightly oiled nonstick skillet over medium-high for about 3 minutes per side until browned.

Serve with peanut sauce, along with rice and steamed vegetable.

Cream of Potato and Broccoli Soup

My camera has fallen, and it can't get up!

Last night I made Vegan Dad's Cream of Potato and Broccoli Soup, altered a tad. It looked just like his picture, except my shallow bowls are white. I used half the amount of nutritional yeast (I'm a weenie.) and added a bit of Better Than Bouillon No Chicken flavor and an extra clove of garlic. I also used almond milk instead of soy milk, and russet potatoes instead of red. I served the soup with fresh French bread warm from the bakery in the corner grocery store. Very nice dinner on a cold, wet day.

Happy Thanksgiving

Easy Chili

Sometimes ya gotta have chili. Yesterday was one of those days. I almost always have ingredients for this chili, or a variation of it, in my pantry.

This chili has excellent flavor, but is not overly hot. Just a nice tingle. If you want a hotter version, you could use a hot chili powder or add jalapenos or serrano peppers or other chile peppers or crushed red pepper flakes or use tomatoes with chiles instead of plain tomatoes. Whatever floats your boat.

Kari's Easy Chili

1 medium onion, diced
1 large green bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Mexican oregano, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp mild chili powder
black pepper
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
2 cups water
2 cans (15 oz) chili beans (these are pinto beans in chili gravy)
1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 tsp Better Than Bouillon No Beef Base
1 cup Morningstar Farms Grillers Crumbles

In large pot, saute onion and bell pepper in a little water until soft. Add garlic and saute a couple minutes longer. Add water as necessary, if the vegetables get too dry. Add oregano, cumin, chili pepper, and black pepper. Cook and stir a couple minutes. Add tomatoes, stirring to scrape bits from bottom of pan. Add tomato sauce, water, chili beans, and kidney beans. Stir in Better Than Bouillon and Grillers crumbles. Simmer 30 minutes. Adjust seasonings if necessary.