Plant Based #4: 10.2 pounds down

Weight: 295, 3% of my weight has gone (10.2 pounds)

Blood Pressure: 135/94

So, I’m into the fourth week of being plant based. Before I discuss anything, I’m going through my rules so I can state exactly where I am….

1. Plant Based mostly on McDougall but using G-Bombs and F-Goals to help maintain the correct daily nutrition

I have stayed plant based except for the one meal.

2. Use my canned foods and easy recipes to make it WORK!

I had an awesome kidney bean, cacciatore sauce on pasta made with my canned cacciatore sauce this week. It was so easy! Just a jar of sauce, a can of beans and pasta. The Cacciatore sauce recipe already has zucchini and onions and everything in it!

3. Will not spend an entire day during the school year on preparation unless it is a canning day (in autumn I do sugar-free applesauce, marmalades, stock, etc) NOTHING CANNED

4. Exercise twice a day (will start small and work up to 15 in am, 30 in pm) with allowed one day off a week STILL HAVE NOT - LIFE HAS BEEN CRAZIER THAN NORMAL

5. Once a week - allowed one meal with vegan substitutes because I don’t want this to be so strict I quit. Again - I only ate some fries.

6. 10 meals during the year can be “specials” - off plan BUT only 10 meals. And I’ll report them to you. I’m down to 9 meals left. I used 1 meal to eat dinner out with my father and stepmother at Nolans in Canandaigua - I had the fish fry. It was good, but not as good as I would hope to use up one of my meals. So 9/2/22 was my first meal. To avoid using another one the next morning for breakfast I just had potatoes and toast at another restaurant to stay plant based.

7. Every Tuesday I will submit my weekly article to VOCAL which should show up by Thursday. It is going in late this week.

8. Every Friday I will submit recipes that are easy to prepare that are plant based in a second article. And travel followed by illness has made this week very difficult - and not all the illness was mine. It will be explained next week.

I am still losing weight and I am still working on this. I would say that I’m starting to defeat my fat cells – those lipid centers of problematic and stubborn unhealthiness. D. Thea Baldrick, or Denise as I know her, has been working on this with me. She keeps looking at it from the science point of view (as she has a science degree that does make sense). She hates cooking and I love cooking - and that doesnt matter. We are both losing weight! She found little baby potatoes that she can eat as a snack and one I want to share is just a baked sweet potato - you can just dig into it without salt or sugar or anything - they are so GOOD!

I went to my father's house to visit this last weekend. My school gives us Friday off so we have a four day weekend for Labor Day. I left my house early on Friday morning and before I left I had hummus toast with tomatoes and onions so I had a healthy breakfast. Then I spent the day with both him and his wife. He took me to my favorite vegetable market on the other side of Canandaigua on 5/20 that has huge cauliflowers and giant heads of cabbage for so little money! My children have always known their cruciferous vegetables very well because we have always gone to vegetable markets. It is too early for our lovely trees of Brussel Sprouts, but the giant cauliflower covered in huge leaves came home. Those huge leaves protected the snowy white of the cauliflower perfectly so it could be eaten right when I walked through the door on Saturday night. We cut that head of cauliflower into pieces and steamed it in a vegan vegetable broth so we could mash it. My 2 year old granddaughter and myself just eat it like that - smashed into the vegetable broth. It is so good to eat and so good for you! It is amazing how much better vegetables straight from a vegetable market can taste!

I go to a lot of fresh vegetable markets because of my canning, but here in PA, my favorite is Nolts which is a Mennonite farm in Washington Township near a little town called Dillsburg - or is it closer to Franklintown? Regardless, it is partway down the road between Dillsburg and Hanover, PA. They, however, usually do not have many cruciferous vegetables other than cabbage so I usually have to travel farther afield to get my cauliflower, broccoli and Brussel Sprouts. But the farmstand varieties are the best!

Find a market - it makes plant based more adventurous!