Cooking on budget pt.1

Some recipes for people short on time and money:

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Healthy Porridge:

80g of rolled oats

20g of flax seed

200ml of soy milk

1 apple

30g nut-mix

Put together all the ingredients except the apple, mix them well and put into the fridge for 1-3 hours. Then slice the apple into little pieces and add before dinner.

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Smoked Tofu, carrots and peas and couscous:

400g of smoked Tofu

1 jar of carrots and green peas

2 onions

1 garlic glove

150 g of couscous

4 tablespoons of oil

vegetable broth

pepper

soy sauce

Put a pan on medium heat and add oil and smoked tofu. Prepare a pot with water and vegetable broth for couscous.

Start heating the pot for the couscous.

Get Tofu nice yellow in color on all sides.

The water should be boiling now, get the couscous in.

Add the onions, sliced (or diced), pressed garlic gloves and the jar full of carrots and green peas (remove the fluid from the jar first).

Keep the couscous from burning on the pot and add some soy sauce to the Tofu pan.

Repeat until couscous is ready.

Sprinkle some pepper on the pan with tofu in it according to your taste.

Fill your dish with half couscous and the other half with the tofu, carrots, peas etc.

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Poor man's taste of asia:

200g rice

2 red bell peppers

3 onions

2 garlic gloves

1 broccoli

2 carrots

2 big tablespoons peanut butter

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoon vinegar

2 tablespoon maple syrup

 

Slice the vegetables into middle sized pieces. Meanwhile add oil into pan and heat it!

Setup another pot, add salt, put on heat and wait until it boils.

In the meantime add the vegetables into the pan and let them until they still have a bit of bite but are not wobbly anymore.

Water should be boiling ,so add rice!

While the rice and the vegetables are about to get ready for dinner, use a small pot and put in the peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, vinegar and the maple syrup and stir this mixture on low heat, so it comes together nicely.

Vegetables and rice should be done now. Put rice and vegetables on your dishes and add the peanut sauce!

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Vegan Wrap #1

1 vegan yoghurt

6 wraps

2 garlic gloves

salad of your choice

1 onion

200g vegan minced soy granulate

1 can kidney beans

150g tomatoes

1 can corn

salt

pepper

lemon juice

vegetable broth

Heat some water until it boils, mix in vegetable broth and add the vegan minced soy and let it rest for 15 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the vegan yogurt by adding one pressed garlic glove, some salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon juice. Mix well and put into fridge.

Slice and dice the onion.

Heat the pan and add oil, add onions and the kidney beans.

Drain the corn jar, get the salad and tomatoes nicely sliced and add to a beverage of your choice.

The kidney beans and onions should look very nice now, drain the water from the minced soy granulate and add to the pan.

Wait until the color of the granulate changed from yellow to brownish.

Add some salt and pepper until it is just right. 

Proceed by folding your own wrap!

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Italian Crime Pasta

500g Noodles (Spaghetti)

Nutritional yeast

1 Eggplant

250g cherry tomatoes

1 onion

salt

pepper

oregano

tomato paste

olive oil

Cover a pot on the bottom with olive oil, add diced eggplant and onion and let it cook on medium heat.

Meanwhile fill another pot with water and a bit of salt.

Get the cherry tomatoes ready by washing them and remove any green parts.

 

Heat the water filled pot until the water boils.

 

Add the cherry tomatoes to the pot with the vegetables in and wait until they are very soft.

 

Water should be boiling now, add the noodles there. Also add the tomato paste in the vegetable pot, add some salt, pepper and oregano there.

 

When the noodles are fine, the tomato vegetable pot should be fine as well. Take from heat and let it cool down.

Drain the water from the pasta pot and wait until most of the water is gone.

 

Put everything on the dishes and add nutritional yeast as topping!

 

 

On meal replacement powders

Hunting and gathering food has been one of the most time consuming tasks for majority of human existence.
Agriculture and Industrialisation minimized the effort for a nice dinner dramatically.
In times were time is scarce, meal replacement powders are a somewhat just logical step to this development.

Welcome to the world of meal replacement powders!

First off: What are those powders exactly?
Well, they are mix of several ingredients such as soy, oatmeal, vitamins and minerals, which should
cover your daily need for nutrients. Often they are also purely vegan or at least vegetarian.

You just need to dissolve those powders into water or milk, like a regular protein shake to have a full meal.
There are many companies, which sell such products and often you can even subscribe to those, so you will receive your weekly dosage of food.

Usually these companies have products very similiar to each other, since the basic recipe is open source.
They all derives from a product called: Soylent, which was developed by Rob Rhinehart, a software developer short on time, creating his very own solution to this problem.

These powders are normally in the price range of 6€-10€ per day. Expensive if you cook your own meals, cheap compared to eating in a restaurant.
And this brings me to the moments when those powders make the most sense: When you are traveling or on a business trip for example.
In that case, these are a cheap and also very fast way of eating and I discovered their value during my time consuming and work-filled days when I had to work in a foreign country.
When it comes to the brand, I have found JimmyJoy® to be my choice, since I live in Europe.
They usually deliver fast and their product tastes good to me, while being easy to digest.
If you want to give it a try, save some money viá this link*:
(http://i.refs.cc/YTboEn7m?smile_ref=eyJzbWlsZV9zb3VyY2UiOiJzbWlsZV91aSIsInNtaWxlX21lZGl1bSI6IiIsInNtaWxlX2NhbXBhaWduIjoicmVmZXJyYWxfcHJvZ3JhbSIsInNtaWxlX2N1c3RvbWVyX2lkIjoxNTE3NTI0OTV9)

During these days, I hardly would find a moment to eat something and the last thing you want, is getting a food poisining, because you ate at some restaurant you didn´t know.
But it´s also of great value when wandering for example, since these powders don´t need any cooling and are quite energy dense, as they come in bags of around 500 grams for a daily portion.
All you need, is a shaker and some water to prepare your meal.

My only friends, when I was working abroad

Another idea is using it for dieting and loosing weight, since it is very easy to track all your calories.
This is actually the main concept behind a lot of liquid meals, which promise you to loose weight.
A strategy that all of the so called formula diets use.

Nevertheless there is a common question, people asked me about it:
What happens to your digestive system, when consuming such products?
A concern, I faced when first using such a product a while back. After 3 days of consuming those meal replacement powders straight, I have had quite a bad time.

People describing this phenomena, are easy to find, when searching the internet on this topic.
I really don´t know what exactly caused this in my case, but as the recipes get changed quite a lot over time and also vary from company to company,
I must say, that when I tried meal replacement powders a few months later by a different company, I didn´t encounter any problems at all.
Going to the toilet was just as normal as when I was eating regular food.
I guess this was mainly due a different recipe.

So far so good, but how does it taste?
First off: Using (soy)milk gives it a better flavour than using water.
Usually vanilla, chocolate, banana provide a nice taste, the more exotic it gets, the weirder it tastes.
The neutral ones weren´t quite my cup of tea, as they are not really neutral but taste much like an odd cousin of oatmeal.
Overall such drinks can be compared mostly to protein powders in terms of taste as well as viscosity.

One may raise an eyebrow over, if this is healthy or not.
And the answer is: we don´t know, since there hadn´t been any long-term research conducted on this.
However it´s propably safe for temporarily usuage. Many people have checked their blood after a longer liquid diet of this sort and mostly nothing really got out of hand, but it is important to keep in mind, that these weren´t medical studies.
(https://jimmyjoy.com/blogs/jimmy-joy/this-guy-ate-plenny-shake-for-6-months-and-had-his-blood-tested-afterwards)
Also the recipies vary a lot from company to company, resulting in very different results of course.

Additionaly it needs to be mentioned that, we don´t fully understand what our body really needs to
stay healthy, especially when it comes to secondary metabolites and micronutrients.
I was quite astonished, when I found out chromium to be on the list of ingredients but apparently scientists think it could be needed for the human body for a while now. (https://academic.oup.com/jn/article-abstract/123/4/626/4724422?redirectedFrom=fulltext).
Another factor which comes into play, is that there are differences in vitamin requirements for each individual based on body composition, physical activity, overall fitness, age, heritage etc.
So the nutrients given in such products could not be sufficent to everyone.
One of the reasons I wouldn´t recommend to live on liquid meals alone and prefer a more versatile, more "natural" diet.

Another point that I saw mentioned very often as an disadvantage, is that, eating itself
is a social undertaking, it has been since day one. From the stone age to the present.
If you just drink a shake in like 3 minutes you can´t participate on that.
Of course this is not a problem if you are not able to, like on a business trip. But it´s a point needs addressing.

You can save on this hassle, when using meal replacement shakes.

Also often pointed out by others, is that, you start missing the taste of real meals and feel a desire to eat something "real".
From my personal experience this is mainly a problem when being in a calorie deficit. Because this will result in gravings for such things, this didn´t really happen to me, that much when I was having just enough calories through these shakes however.
But I assume this problem also occurs if you actually have free time to think about this and walk by several restaurants.

So in short, what is my opinion on meal replacement shakes?
It´s a nice for situations, where time is a big factor and quite a healthy one, compared to the alternative of Junk Food for example.
Also it´s a good idea to loose or gain weight.
Altough not a permanent solution when it comes to eating, as our knowledge regarding our nutrient requirements grows, we might see more meal replacement shakes and they grow more normal.

*This is a ref-link which provides me some income for the blog and you potentially save yourself some money.
If you think, this is a bad idea or the link is broken or whatever, let me know!