A couple of dinners, and.....

Here are a couple of dinners that I have made over the last little while. The first is a spinach salad with a black bean salad and Miss Vickies roasted red pepper potatoe chips. The creamy orange-poppy seed dressing is taken from Dreena Burton's Vive le Vegan I highly recommend this salad dressing. You can load it on because the creamy part is tofu! I used mori nu, it is the best tofu for stuff like this. Spinach is one of those wonder foods, it prevents cancer, helps improve bone density, helps improve cardiovascular health, prevents cancer and makes you smarter. The black beans in the other salad are a very good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber, as are most other legumes. In addition to lowering cholesterol, black beans' high fiber content prevents blood sugar levels from rising too rapidly after a meal, making these beans an especially good choice for individuals with diabetes, insulin resistance or hypoglycemia. The black beans are also loaded with antioxidants.


The second meal is just a simple salad loaded with fresh produce from our garden - tomatoes and zucchini. Also for additional nutritional punch I sprinkled the salad with hemp seed nuts and walnuts. Walnuts are a fantastic way to add those essential omega 3 fatty acids to your diet. Hemp seed nuts are also a source of omega 3's, you get 250 mgs of omega 3's in one 1/4 cup serving. Hemp Seed Nut also contains the rare fatty acid Gamma-Linolenic Acid (GLA). The second salad is made with tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden with a few sliced olives added in for extra flavour. Olives are a very good source of monounsaturated fats and a good source of vitamin E. Because monounsaturated fats are less easily damaged than polyunsaturated fats, it's good to have some in our cells' outer membranes and other cell structures that contain fats, such as the membranes that surround the cell's DNA and each of its energy-producing mitochondria. The stability of monounsaturated fats translates into a protective effect on the cell that, especially when combined with the antioxidant protection offered by vitamin E, can lower the risk of damage and inflammation. I served this with some tofu coated with the tofu coating from the Fresh at Home recipe book. I have totally been craving Fresh lately, I will have to make a trip soon, that is for sure.


The last part of this post is for Vegan Diva. She loves a good deal so I had to post the first thing I baked in my new bread machine. This is honey oat bread. I made it in my new to me bread machine. Hubby picked it up at Value Village for $24.99! Watch out for pizza again!