New PD Recipes this week!

If you follow a Protective Diet, you'll be happy to hear the new Premium recipes this week. I love to see a new oil free salad dressing especially if it pours on and dresses veggies just like an olive oil. I'm excited to see that the dressing will last for 10 days. Great recipes this week. Check them out if they sound go to you also!

• Balsamic Roasted Veggie Salad
• Classic Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Fire Roasted Corn

If you are new to Protective Diet, you have to create a login to see her yummy recipes. She has two types of recipes on the site: free and premium. I invite you to create a free login on the Protective Diet site to try her free healthy recipes. I'm confident that you will love them like me plus save money buy eating at home. Click on the Getting Started Video. Protective Diet Education may qualify as a Health Savings Account expense.You may need a pre-existing diagnosis by a physician such as: obesity, hypertension, diabetes etc.

Frugal Tip #1-Save money, make your own corn tortillas

I love saving money!

I save a lot of money by making things at home instead of buying them already made. One example is corn tortillas. I picked up 4 lbs of Instant Masa Corn flour at the grocery store for about $3. I can't tell you how many times I've made tortillas in the last couple month and I still have a little bit of flour left in my bag. The other ingredients for corn tortillas are water and salt. You might want to consider making your own corn tortillas at home to save money each month.

How long do they take?

Tortillas don't take very long to make especially if you follow the recipe at Protective Diet. A different tortilla recipe I found online has you leave the mixture to rest, but this recipe doesn't. This Protective Diet Premium recipe is perfect when you want to save time. She estimates 15 min prep time and 15 minute cook time.

Do I need a press?

No, you don't even need a tortilla press to get started. I have a cast iron tortilla press that I picked up from Amazon to quickly press out the tortilla shells.Check out the two videos that explains how to make hand-pressed corn tortillas. My first time I watched the video and printed my recipe. It was so exciting to make fresh corn tortillas by myself. Since this recipe is part of her premium recipes. You do have to have subscribe.

If you are new to Protective Diet, you have to create a login to see her yummy recipes. She has two types of recipes on the site: free and premium. I invite you to create a free login on the Protective Diet site to try her free healthy recipes. I'm confident that you will love them like me plus save money buy eating at home. Click on the Getting Started Video. Protective Diet Education may qualify as a Health Savings Account expense.You may need a pre-existing diagnosis by a physician such as: obesity, hypertension, diabetes etc.

$1.99 Kindle books at Amazon

I admit that I'm a recipe hoarder/collector. I like to collect physical cookbooks, kindle cookbooks, and online recipes. I was checking out Amazon today and I saw that there are a couple plant-based books at Amazon right now for $1.99 for the Kindle version. Amazon prices change all the time so I'm not sure how long these will last.

Three plant-based Kindle books for $1.99 at Amazon!

I found the two cookbooks listed below by Lindsay Nixon. Lindsay's recipes are plant-based with no oil. She does use nuts, avocado, dried fruit, peanut butter, coconut and some other ingredients in her recipes that don't qualify under a Protective Diet. Many times I can either alter the ingredients (leave them out), replace them (like replace the coconut with more fruit), or just don't use that recipe. I think that for $1.99 even if you found a couple recipes that you love, it will be worth the price of the book.

• Everyday Happy Herbivore: Over 175 Quick-and-Easy Fat-Free and Low-Fat Vegan Recipes 
•  The Happy Herbivore Cookbook: Over 175 Delicious Fat-Free and Low-Fat Vegan Recipes

 T. Collin Campbell's follow-up book to the China Study. This one isn't a cookbook, but I picked it up to continue on my learning about a whole food, plant based diet. I plan on diving into this book this weekend. Yeah!

•  Whole: Rethinking The Science of Nutrition 

House Mayo Recipe

I stopped eating mayo this summer when I started reading food labels. Most packaged mayos contain soybean oil and I'm trying to avoid that product. At first, I didn't think I could eat a healthier version of mayo, but I found a House Mayo Recipe on the Protective Diet website.

It's actually a super easy recipe to whip up. I used  my blender and it took my less than 5 minutes from start to finish, including finding my ingredients. There are two recipes on the website for mayo. I picked this one because it has vinegar in it to help it to stay fresh in the fridge longer. That part is important to me. I don't use a lot of mayo or keep mayo on hand at all times, but I am going to use it in a different recipe later today. I'll keep my mayo in the fridge in a glass canning jar.

If you are new to Protective Diet, you have to create a login to see Julie Marie's yummy plant based healthy recipes. She has two types of recipes on the site: free and premium. I invite you to create a free login on the Protective Diet site to try her free healthy recipes. I'm confident that you will love them like me plus save money buy eating at home. Click on the Getting Started Video. Protective Diet Education may qualify as a Health Savings Account expense.You may need a pre-existing diagnosis by a physician such as: obesity, hypertension, diabetes etc.

It's the first day of March

Finally, we are getting closer to Spring. Here in Michigan it's 28 degrees today. That's actually very warm. Last week, we had days that didn't get above zero. I'm happy the days are longer and that Spring is not far now.

This type of Michigan weather makes for perfect days to stay in and cook healthy delicious food. I don't feel guilty staying in my kitchen and not going outside. Plus, with having the oven on, it warms up the house. It's eleven am and I've started on a couple things I can eat this week.

Here's what I am working on in my kitchen:

• Protective Diet Chia Jam (I'll use for my oatmeal this week)
• Veggie Broth (cooking a very basic broth in my Instant Pot- onions, leeks, carrots and celery)
• Dried Chick Peas are soaking (I'll cook these up in my Instant Pot when my broth is done.)
• Protective Diet Chocolate Bird Seed

I think I'll make P.D. Chickpea Cucumber Salad later today. I'll look to see what other recipes look good, so I can make up my lunch for tomorrow. Hope you are staying warm and enjoying March 1st wherever you are.

If you are new to Protective Diet, you have to create a login to see her yummy recipes. She has two types of recipes on the site: free and premium. I invite you to create a free login on the Protective Diet site to try her free healthy recipes. I'm confident that you will love them like me.

What's your plan for your day off?

Saturday and Sunday are my day off. I realize that some people have to work weekends, but I Iove my job where I get two days off in the row with the kids.

Today, I plan on cooking and reading/skimming two cookbooks I got from the library. I belong to a couple plant based FaceBook groups that I love to follow. Some folks have been raving about a book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz called 'Isa Does It!", so I HAD to check it out.

I found that my library was able to get me two cookbooks by Isa:  'Isa Does It!' and Veganomicon, The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. I'm excited to see what recipes in her cookbooks qualify/fall under a Protective Diet (no oils, sugar or white flour) or if they can be modified to qualify.

At first glance, Isa Does It! looks like a wonderful book; it's 311 pages with beautiful pictures on almost every page. I have to admit, I'm a bit of a recipe hoarder. I love collecting healthy recipes that taste great. I'm always on a search to add something else to my binder or a new cookbook to my shelf. I try at least 4 new recipes each week. Some I like, others I don't. The ones that work, I keep; the others I'm ok with cutting ties with. Happy reading. . .

Friday - What's for lunch?

My Lunch: 

Friday's lunch was soup and salad. I like lunches that are easy to grab in the morning. I don't have a lot of extra time in the morning to put together my lunch and it's so much better for me to take my lunch than to try to find a healthy lunch eating out.

So for lunch I had the following

• Protective Diet Veggie Chili
• Salad made with romaine, spinach and cabbage, cucumbers, carrots
• Protective Diet - Daily Dressing
• Apple

PD Daily Dressing:

 I'm so glad I found Protective Diet (PD) , especially for yummy dressings for salad. Before I signed up for Protective Diet Premium Recipes, I searched for alternate dressings to make on my own that didn't have bad ingredients: soybean or other oil, sugar, etc. I hadn't found a dressing that I liked. So far I've tried two PD, the daily dressing and the French Dressing. They are both very, very tasty and healthy. I can't wait to try the others.

What I learned Today: 

I found that I ended up not taking enough for lunch today. I was really hungry in two hours and ate a tangerine. Then an hour later, I had a banana. I always make sure I have something healthy to snack on in my bag so I don't go grab a candy bar or anything else non-healthy from the vending machine at work. I'm still in the phase where I'm trying to figure out how much food I need to eat to feel me up. So for Monday, I'm definitely taking a larger lunch.

If you are new to Protective Diet, you have to create a login to see her yummy recipes. She has two types of recipes on the site: free and premium. I invite you to create a free login on the Protective Diet site to try her free healthy recipes. I'm confident that you will love them like me.