Putting aside from the question of whether or not it’s even possible to eat a healthy diet (and clean up) in that amount of time. Chew your food people! How do you scarf three meals a day so quickly? I really hope I’m preaching to the choir here and you all chew your food well before swallowing, thus improving your digestion.

I think we need to put a higher priority on food in our lives. For instance, if you only have 31 minutes a day for food, cut something else out. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, call off the soccer if it means you don’t have time to eat well, etc. You get the idea.

The other thing I find disturbing about that statistic (and I hope it’s off, but it sounds feasible with what I’ve seen) is that you can’t even have a good dinner conversation with your kids if that is the total amount of time allotted to food in your day.

Bit of a rant, I know. But, really! Please tell me you all spend more time than that with your food.

C

The official scoop on Lindsay and her cookbooks:

“Lindsay S. Nixon is a rising star in the culinary world, praised for her ability to use everyday ingredients to create healthy, low fat recipes that taste just as delicious as they are nutritious. Lindsay’s recipes have been featured in Vegetarian Times, Women’s Health Magazine and on The Huffington Post. Lindsay is also a consulting chef at La Samanna, a luxury resort and four-star restaurant in the French West Indies. You can learn more about Lindsay and sample some of her recipes at happyherbivore.com“

“After vegan chef Lindsay S. Nixon wrapped up her popular cookbook The Happy Herbivore Cookbook last year, she went back to her kitchen in her new home of St. Maarten. Island living encouraged Nixon to come up with simpler fare, which led to a follow-up cookbook focusing on recipes that bring tasty back to quick-and-easy.”

“Everyday Happy Herbivore includes more than 175 doable recipes–recipes that are so quick and easy, you could cook three healthy meals from scratch every day like Nixon does.”

And now, our interview.

HerbivoreMeals (HM) – I’m excited to interview you about your new cookbook, Everyday Happy Herbivore. Could you briefly your cooking style for any of my readers who aren’t familiar with you? In particular, what are your priorities when it comes to developing a new recipe? I know they obviously need to be plant based and that you don’t use added fats, anything else?

Happy Herbivore (HH) – I have a no fuss cooking style — “everyday” ingredients we all have in our pantries or at our local supermarket (nothing obscure or bizarre) and recipes that are not only easy to prepare but fast (30 mins or less, many are under 15 minutes). I’m all about making healthy eating affordable, practical, accessible to everyone — and delicious!

HM – From what I’ve read on your blog it sounds like the decision to start eating a Vegan diet was also the moment that you had to start cooking. What was the transition like from little kitchen experience to the main chef? How long did learning to cook well take?

HH – I was a complete novice — I barely knew how to boil water to make pasta. Scott, my husband, was the cook in our relationship and when I decided to ditch meat, he was supportive and cooked us great vegetarian dishes, but when I took the next step — vegan, he told me I was on my own. I’d only tried to cook a few times prior, and all attempts were total failures, so I had little confidence I’d be able to make anything edible, but I was determined to be vegan. I started slow and easy, making things like soup in a crockpot. Then I ventured into muffins and the first 3 baking attempts came out wrong, but when the 4th batch rose perfectly (and tasted good too!) I was a new person. Every bad experience – gone.
One success gave me the courage to keep cooking. It started out of necessity but turned into something I loved.

HM – Do you have any tips to make the transition easier for new plant based cooks?

HH – Take it a meal at a time. Remember attitude is everything. Have a positive attitude and you’ll have a positive experience. Focus on all the foods you can have, not those you gave up.

HM – Personally, I find I enjoy food more without the animal products. I think the flavors of the food are highlighted rather than covered with cheese, etc. What has your experience with this been?

HH – I eat a much wider variety of food now than I ever did as an omnivore. Once I gave up animal products, and also oil, I discovered a world of flavor I’d missed previously. Foods that I thought were bland and tasteless were now bursting with flavor. Animal products and oil coat your tongue, so it’s like tasting food with a glove on… once the glove comes off there is so much flavor!

HM – What is the main difference between this new cookbook and your last? Is it just new recipes and the same cooking style or do these recipes focus more on time saving techniques?

HH – Both books focus on wholesome “everyday” ingredients, low fat recipes… the same no fuss cooking style, but Everyday has more variety. For example, I have smoothies in Everyday (something you won’t find in the first book). I also pulled in a lot of international inspiration. You’ll find recipes with Cajun flavors, Thai, African, Indian, Italian and so many more.

My first cookbook has a lot of “comfort foods” and I’m sort of going back to basics with Everyday — focusing on fresh ingredients, celebrating vegetables and legumes rather than remaking an old family favorite like I did with the first book.

HM – I’m especially curious about the time frame for making your recipes since some of my readers are only interested in cooking if it’s quick.
How much time does it take to make your average recipes?

HH – In Everyday, most recipes come together in 30 minutes or less. Most are under 15 minutes. The idea behind the book is the recipes are so quick-and-easy you could cook from scratch 3x a day like I do. The only recipes that take over 30 minutes are cakes and some other desserts which just can’t be shortened. There are a lot of quick recipes in my first book as well. Both books have a “quick” icon indicating fast recipes.

A few question specifically about the content of this cookbook:

HM – How often do you call for refined sugars?

HH – It depends on what you consider refined. I don’t use white sugar, but you’ll find maple syrup, molasses, raw sugar and agave in the baked goods (i.e. muffins and cakes) — though I did include some sugar-free (sweetener-free) recipes in both the muffins and dessert section as well. I don’t have muffins or cookies very often, so I don’t mind using a little sugar when I make them.

HM – What is your inspiration when developing new recipes? And, do they usually work out the first time, or do you have flops on the way?

HH – It’s a good mix of trying to replicate recipes that I used to eat that were either not vegan or not healthy, I’ll create something on the fly or I’ll be inspired by an ingredient. For example I saw a beautiful bunch of chard I couldn’t pass up so I took it home and created a recipe for it.

I’m fortunate that most recipes work on the first try, though there are always some recipes that take a lot of work to get it just right. There was a sausage recipe in my first book that took 4 or 5 executions before it worked.

HM – One benefit to your cooking style is that you use ingredients that are generally very easy to find. What would you consider the most “exotic” or difficult to find ingredients that you use in Everyday Happy Herbivore?

HH – Nutritional yeast.

HM – What are your favorite recipes in your new book?

HH – Asking a chef to pick their favorite recipe is like asking a parent to pick their favorite child

So, there you have it, and hopefully that will be helpful to some of you with your last minute Christmas shopping, or just your own personal cookbook collection.

Also, Lindsay has provided a recipe from her new cookbook for all of you to try.

Quick Burgers | makes 4

I developed these burgers in a hotel room: they’re quick, easy and require very few ingredients. (In fact, except for the beans and a seasoning packet, I sourced all the ingredients from the complimentary “breakfast bar”). I make these burgers any time I need a super fast meal or I’m really low on ingredients.

15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp yellow mustard
1 tsp onion powder (granulated)
1 tsp garlic powder (granulated)
1/3 c instant oats

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper and set aside. In a mixing bowl, mash black beans with a fork until mostly pureed but still some half beans and bean parts are left. Stir in condiments and spices until well combined. Then mix in oats. Divide into 4 equal portions and shape into thin patties with your hands. Bake for 7 minutes, carefully flip over and bake for another 7 minutes, or until crusty on the outside. Slap into a bun with extra condiments and eat!

Chef’s note: If you only have rolled oats, chop them up in a food processor or blender so they are smaller and more like instant oats. Rolled oats left whole tend to make the burgers fall apart.

Per Burger: 109 Calories, 0.5g Fat, 17.6g Carbohydrates, 3g Fiber, 2.2g Sugars, 5g Protein

Hope you enjoy!

C

C

This part, shaping the bread, is kind of like playing with clay. The main goal being to put the seam side down in the bread pan, or on the baking sheet, etc.

When I make bread I usually make at least one loaf for sandwiches, toast, etc. Usually two. One of the loaves in this picture has been braided, just for fun at my son’s request. Sometimes I make rolls, or use some of the dough for pizza or scones (Western Style).

There are a myriad of rolls to be made. In fact I found this fun post using a different recipe, but with excellent shaping options for the rolls.

If you want crispy rolls space them farther apart. If you want them to be soft let them raise into each other. One of my favorites is crescent rolls, just roll the dough out into a large circle and cut into 12 elongated triangles (like a pizza), then roll them up from the wide end to the skinny and let raise.
I bake rolls for about 20 minutes.

To use the dough for pizza just roll or stretch it to the desired size. If you want pizza dough for later use, shape some of it into a disk, about 9 inches around and one inch thick. Then put that in the freezer for use later. When it’s time to make pizza it defrosts fairly quickly, I usually pull it out about an hour before I need the dough, you could pull it out a bit earlier too, that’s just when I start thinking about dinner.

Flatbread – roll it out and fry it in a pan as mentioned by Tammie in this post.

To make breadsticks, think of playing with clay, just make some snakes and let them raise, bake for 15 to 20 minutes depending on thickness and desired level of crispness.

C

Sorry for the long delay in this series. For those who are wondering, I’ve been playing catchup at home after recovering from a brief (o.k. the longest I’ve had in 7 years) stint with illness.

C

We’ll start with the water, 3 to 3 1/2 cups will give you an average size batch of bread dough. This makes 2 or 3 loaves, or a loaf and a bunch of rolls, etc. I pour in about 1/2 of the amount from room temperature filtered water, and the other half out of my tea kettle (heated of course), not necessarily boiling, but quite hot. (I will say here, that some people – Chef Brad for instance – dump in all the ingredients, half the flour, and add the yeast on top to avoid any risk of killing it with water that’s too hot. So, if you’re interested you can look into that method.) You’re going for “wrist temperature” water in the mixer, that means quite warm, but not anywhere near boiling.

Add in a bit of sweetener, 1/2 teaspoon is sufficient here, but who wants to measure? This could be almost anything; like molasses, agave, barley malt, rice syrup or honey.

Now add in your yeast, about 1 Tablespoon is good for a batch of this size.

Let this proof – proving to you that the yeast is active and happy.

Add in a few cups (about 3) of the flour (this needs to be a gluten containing flour, like wheat or spelt) for the sponge stage where you’ll let this raise for 1/2 hour or so. Of course bread can be made without this step, in fact if you have a mixer you could just mix it longer to develop the gluten, but I think using the sponge step leads to lighter whole grain breads.

Now, for the fun part.
Decide how much oil, sweetener, etc. that you want to add, 1/4 to 1/2 cup of each is a good range. I actually use less oil than that and often less sweetener. (Rather than adding any oil you could use ground flax seeds). Be sure to include salt, bread made without it will remind you never to do so again. Use about 1 Tablespoon for a batch this size.
You can at this point also include seasonings, herbs, soaked/cooked grains, or nuts in your creation.

Some suggestions:
For a french style bread you’ll want to leave the oil and sweetener out entirely.
For a richer dough you could use more oil/ground flax seed and even sub some non-dairy milk for part of the liquid.

Add/knead in the additional flour. This does not all need to have a high gluten content. For instance some of it could be oat flour, which does not contain gluten. Continue to add flour until the dough begins to leave the sides of the bowl. You want it a bit sticky, this gives a softer bread, be especially careful when using a mixer which can make it easy to add too much flour.

Here we have what you could call the official “template”, to be used as a jumping off point.

3 – 3 1/2 cups water
drop of sweetener
1 Tablespoon yeast
at least 4 cups of a gluten containing flour, such as spelt or wheat in it’s many variations.
1 Tablespoon salt
Oil or ground flax seed
Honey or other sweetener
Any desired additions
The rest of the flour, gluten or not depending on your creation

For more information on this method, and instructions with and without a mixer see the Basic Whole Wheat Bread recipe in our recipe section.

C

I used to think it required special bread recipe for each new type of bread I wanted to make; crescent rolls, baugettes, pizza, etc. And while that might give your bread some subtle differences that those striving for perfection could appreciate, it’s often not a practical way to provide your family with bread. Who has time to make 4 different recipes in a week? So, that leaves you with the option of only eating one type of bread that week (I’ve done this a lot, not a bad option really), purchasing some of your bread ready made, or… becoming more flexible with the use of your basic bread recipe.

This way you can make bread once for a week, or two if you double the recipe. And still end up with your sandwich bread, rolls, pizza, buns, or whatever else is needed for the week (because you planned your menus, so you know what you need, right?). Here’s a very basic bread recipe, it doesn’t get much more basic than this.

However, I’ll elaborate on it a bit, and you should be able to come up with your own recipe’s in the future. I will say too, that making bread is one of those things you need to actually DO before you entirely “get it”. It’s not hard though, just a new skill that will take a small time investment to catch on to.

This will be a three part series, so stay tuned.

C

That turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. You’ll notice that at the beginning of the month many of my posts were accompanied by nice photos. Then the photos disappeared and I began to feel that I was treading water, barely able to keep my head afloat. Hopefully, I still managed to post helpful information and nothing was too sloppy in spite of it all.

Here’s the post from day 1 with links to all of the 31 Days of Menus posts. Admittedly, there are only 29 days of really good information, since I used day 1 and day 31 for commentary .

Now I’m going to take a break from blogging. I’ll be gone for DAYS, I’m sure it will feel like forever after this challenge!

C

So, obviously the first option is – don’t plan on dessert.

Another option is to make cookies (raw or baked) during the day to be served after dinner, because some nights it would be nice. Here’s a like to my favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe. (I use whole wheat flour rather than white and sucanat in place of the sugar called for in the recipe)

And a few other dessert options:
Apple Crisp
No Bake Cookies
Homemade Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream
Fruit Pizza
Popcorn Balls

C

Salad and Rolls are favorite and often seen accompaniments
Simple on veggie side dishes, steamed or sauteed are also nice; broccoli, edamame, carrots, kale, sweet potato, etc.
Baked potatoes work as a side dish, when they’re not part of the main course.
Roasted veggies, like the broccoli from Post Punk Kitchen are also an option
Also,
Sliced fruit
or
Fruit salads
Basically, anything simple that rounds out the meal, contrasting colors are nice; if the main course is green use sweet potatoes or carrots, or if it is orange use spinach or beans as a side.

C