Cabbage Soup Diet

Don't worry, I'm not going on another crazy cleanse! I'm just working on my retro vegan cookbook project (yes, STILL working on it, slowly but surely), and I came up with a recipe for Cabbage Soup based off the 1980s Cabbage Soup fad diet.

I was too young to have tried the cabbage soup diet, but I do remember hearing about it. If you're not familiar, the Cabbage Soup Diet was a fun bit of faxlore. Yes, that's a real thing! Folklore spread about by fax machine! How delightfully '80s! People would fax copies of a seven-day diet plan that involved lots of cabbage soup, a ton of bananas, raw fruit and veggies, and fruit juice. According to the plan, you could have as much cabbage soup throughout the week as you wanted.

The diet is believed to have actually started in the 1950s, but it was revived in the '80s as the Dolly Parton Diet and/or the Stewardess Diet (or sometimes called the Model Diet). Legend had it that one could lose 10 to 17 pounds in a week because cabbage contained a "miracle fat-burning compound." Of course, that's not true. But people will believe anything. And remember — this was in the days before Google, so if you're friend told you cabbage was magical, you couldn't just do an internet search and find actual science to dispute her.

Here's a sample plan that I found on diet.com. By the way, I am not advocating anyone actually try this plan. It sounds crazy. But I thought it'd be fun to re-print here so y'all can see how silly it is.

Day One: Eat only the cabbage soup and all the fruit you want (except bananas). Cantaloupe and watermelon are recommended. Permissible drinks are water, black coffee, cranberry juice, or unsweetened tea.
Day Two: No fruit. Raw or cooked vegetables can be eaten in unlimited quantity along with the soup, except for corn, peas, and beans. A baked potato with butter can be eaten at dinnertime.
Day Three: Unlimited fruit or vegetables, but no baked potato.
Day Four: Eat at least three and as many as eight bananas, and drink an unlimited amount of skim milk. Day Four is supposed to curb a desire for sweets.
Day Six: Eat cabbage soup at least once during the day; otherwise, an unlimited amount of beef and vegetables can be consumed, but no baked potato.
Day Seven: Eat an unlimited amount of brown rice and vegetables and drink an unlimited amount of unsweetened fruit juice. Cabbage soup must be eaten at least once during the day. No bread, alcohol, or carbonated beverages (including diet soda) are allowed.

Eight bananas!! An unlimited amount of beef!! That's just crazy talk. 

But it's no wonder you could eat all the cabbage soup you wanted. This stuff is amazingly low-cal. I created my recipe by veganizing the recipes I found online. I'm saving the recipe for the book, but it's basically just cabbage, bell peppers, tomatoes, celery, veggie broth, and a homemade onion soup mix (like the packaged onion soup mix but made with dried onions and spices from my cabinet). I counted up the calories, and there are only 26 calories per cup of soup!

That made for an intensely low-cal meal, so in a very un-cabbage-soup-diet-like move, I served it with a not-so-low-cal Tempeh BLT with homemade tempeh bacon (from the recipe in Cookin' Crunk), Just Mayo, tomato, and lettuce.

My goal for 2016 is to wrap up recipe development for the book. I have a TON of vintage vegan recipes already, but I'm organizing the book by decade. And some decades have more than others. I need to even that out. Also, I'm lacking many desserts, so I need to get to baking!

Valentine's Day Eats!

Paul and I had a lovely (taco-free) Valentine's Day!

We started the morning with a lovely little brunch at home. Paul's definitely an omnivore, but he's getting better about eating vegan meats. I offered to make pancakes, thinking he'd just want pancakes with no side. But he actually requested that I make vegan sausage to go with them! I made the Perfect Pancakes from Vegan Brunch and some Gimme Lean Vegan Sausage. Served with fresh organic raspberries, banana slices, maple syrup, and Earth Balance coconut spread.

After brunch, we caught a matinee performance of Green Day's American Idiot at Playhouse on the Square. I've been a huge Green Day fan since junior high (when Dookie came out), and American Idiot was such an important album to help me (and so many others) make it through the rough Bush years in my mid-20s. Loved this show so much! I know all the words to every song on American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown (the other album used in the show), and it was so cool to see those songs translated into a rock opera onstage.

After the show, we did a little shopping in Overton Square. We stopped by Sweet Noshings, a bulk candy shop, so Paul could stock up, and then we bought some fancy olive oils (vegan butter oil for me, habanero oil for Paul) at Square Olive, a gourmet oil/vinegar shop. Then we met our friends Emily and Thrasher for dinner at Crazy Noodle. That's where the first pic in this post was taken. I ordered the Mandu Guk, but they messed up and served me the Mandu Ramen. No worries. It was prepared vegan-style with veggie broth and no egg. And this ramen dish with veggie dumplings is one of my go-tos there anyway. Yum!

After dinner, we went back home for dessert. I'd picked up a few Valentine's cupcakes from Cassi's Pink Diva Cupcakery. We had Red Velvet Oreo Cupcakes and a Vanilla Funfetti Cupcake. We each ate our own red velvet and split the vanilla in half. Delicious!

Then we met back up with Emily and Thrasher at Studio on the Square to catch an evening screening of Deadpool. I'm not a huge comic book movie fan, but Paul wanted to see it. And since it was marketed as an adult comic (with lots of cursing and stuff), I figured I'd like it. And I did! Super cute movie. Hope y'all had a Happy Valentine's Day too!

Taco Cleanse Wrap-Up!

For the past week, I've been eating as many tacos as possible (breakfast tacos, lunch tacos, and dinner tacos) using recipes from The Taco Cleanse, the satirical new vegan taco cookbook that pokes fun at the cleanse trend. I know taco cleansing doesn't actually detox the body or whatever, but I've gotta admit that I'm feeling pretty good after a week of tacos. I mean, how can you feel bad when you're eating tacos?

Amazingly, I'm not even tired of tacos. I could taco cleanse for life!! And that's a good thing because I have a lot of taco fillings leftover, so I'll be eating tacos well into next week. #tacocleanse4eva!! Here's a wrap-up of my last few tacos (and a cocktail!). I probably won't blog about my tacos next week since they'll be more of the same thing you're seeing here.

On Friday, I started the day with more tofu scramble & tempeh bacon tacos and I had leftover ion-charged refried bean, potato, and kale tacos for lunch. But dinner was a dessert taco! I'd planned to have this Inspiring Churro Waffle Taco for dessert at some point throughout the week. But it's a pretty hearty dessert, so I figured I could just make it for dinner on Friday. This was a cinnamon-spiked waffle dipped in cinnamon-sugar and stuffed with a banana and bee-free honee (the recipe called for agave, but I was out). I served it with a side of vegan sausage to make this a proper brinner.

Just amazing! Even though it's a dessert taco, I could see myself eating this for breakfast on the regular. I'll probably add this to the rotation. I mean, it does include a banana, so it's totally health food, right?

Later on Friday night, I whipped up another tequila cocktail from The Taco Cleanse. When taco cleansing, one must properly supplement with margaritas. Or in this case, a margarita-inspired martini. This Mexican Martini has tequila, triple sec, fresh lime and orange juice, Sprite, and a splash of olive brine. Seems like a weird combo, but actually, the olives just act like the salt in a margarita. They go perfectly together.

Oops! Looks like someone forgot to take the sticker off the base of her martini glass!

On Saturday, the last day of my taco cleanse, I came up with some fun new tacos using various filling recipes from The Taco Cleanse book. My co-worker Susan, who also did the Abundance Diet with me last month, went on a bit of a taco cleanse this week too! WE JUST CAN'T STOP CLEANSING! Ha! But unlike me, who could eat tacos for life, Susan was already growing weary of tacos by the end of last week. So she gave me some of her leftovers, and I combined those with my own leftovers to create some new taco combos.

My fave was this Blue Corn Chip-Crusted Tofu Taco. She'd made this tofu recipe from the book, which involves dredging firm tofu in crumbled corn chips, and she gave me a serving. I had it on a homemade flour tortilla with Ion-Charged Refried Beans (from the book), Parmela Creamery Chipotle Nut Cheese (ordered from Vegan Essentials, and it's omg amazing), tomatoes, bell peppers, and cilantro.

I had that for lunch on Saturday, along with another new taco. Susan also gave me the rest of her Deeply Roasted Chipotle Butternut Squash (b-nut squash, chickpeas, walnuts) from the book. I combined that with some leftover kidney beans and guacamole. Yum!

That was a hearty and filling lunch, and it powered me through grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon. Later on Saturday night, I created another taco. But I just had one taco because my friend Andy was hosting an Anti-Valentine's party, and I knew there'd be lots of vegan snacks there. I used my leftover Tolerant Bulgur Chorizo (that I'd made for my totcho tacos last Sunday) to make a more traditional taco with vegan cheddar, guac, salsa, tomato, lettuce, and hot sauce. Good stuff!

That's it for Taco Cleanse! And happy Valentine's Day! I'll be back tomorrow with a V-Day food recap (sadly, no tacos were had).

Taco Cleanse Day 5: Tacos and Cupcakes!

Confession: I started my morning off with a smoothie, not a taco. I did make breakfast taco fixins this week, and I've been enjoying those on non-running mornings. But this morning, I did a speedwork run, and my body just doesn't do good with solid food for at least an hour after a run. So I had this Mexican Chocolate Protein Smoothie with Vega One Chocolate protein, cashew milk, banana, cinnamon, cayenne, and maca.

But I did have tacos for lunch! I stuffed my leftover Crispy Orange Bean Curd (tofu & veggie patties in soy-orange sauce) and jasmine rice from Jasmine Thai & Vegetarian Restaurant into corn tortillas. This stuff was amazing last night at the restaurant, but I really think it was even better stuffed into tacos at lunch. Everything is better stuffed in a taco.

For dinner, I made some individual recipes from The Taco Cleanse cookbook — the book that's inspiring this week's all tacos, all the time diet — and combined them in corn tortillas. The book does include recipes for specific tacos, but there's also a chapter filled with individual taco filler recipes, so you can mix and match your own tacos. I made the Ion-Charged Refried Beans (slow-cooked pintos with rotel, onions, and roasted garlic), the Abundant Roasted Potatoes (garlic-roasted taters), and the High Vibration Kale Chips. I stuffed those into a taco with guacamole and Yellowbird Serrano Sauce.

What a perfect combo! Beans, potatoes, and kale go so well together! Unfortunately, my oven-baked kale chips didn't stay crispy overnight (I prepped them the night before). I probably should have dehydrated them since my experience with oven-baked kale chips is they always result in soggy kale chips the next day. They were super crisp right out of the oven, but they didn't hold up overnight. They still tasted delicious though! Roasted kale really does have a special flavor that you don't get from dehydrating. 

I made these tacos on corn tortillas instead of flour ones because I wanted smaller snack-sized tacos. I needed to save room for cupcakes, snacks, beer, and wine at Cassi's one-year anniversary for her vegan restaurant, Pink Diva Cupcakery. She had a little anniversary party tonight. 

There were no tacos, but there was a nacho bar. I only had a few chips since I'd eaten tacos already. But I definitely got down on these Mini Grilled Vegan Cheeses.

And little shot glasses of Tomato Soup.

And most importantly, there were cupcakes! These were mini Chocolate Diva Cakes — chocolate cupcake, whipped topping, chocolate ganache. I had a couple!

I'm so proud that Cassi's business has been open a year! She hasn't been in her brick-and-mortar for a year (that's been about six months), but she has been slinging cupcakes for that long. Before her location on Florida Street, she was selling cakes at Midtown Crossing Grill.

I'll continue my taco cleanse through Saturday. But I have a ton of taco fillings left, so I'll likely be eating tacos all next week too, and that's totally fine. I COULD EAT TACOS FOREVER! I will check back in with a taco update on Sunday.

Taco Cleanse: Cheat Night!

Okay, so you know how when I do a real cleanse (like the 28-day Abundance Diet I did in January), I'm always throwing in cheat days (like the time last month when I ate a giant slice of peanut butter chocolate birthday cake and had a gluten/plant meat buffet)? Well, this week I'm taco cleansing (which, of course, isn't an actual detox plan), and I worked in a little cheat night tonight.

For the week, I'm making recipes from The Taco Cleanse, a satirical  cookbook poking fun at the cleanse trend. That means tacos for breakfast, tacos for lunch, tacos for dinner, and even dessert tacos. And I did, in fact, have breakfast and lunch tacos today — leftover tofu scramble/tempeh bacon tacos and leftover soy curl fajitas.

But I'd made dinner plans several weeks ago with the Memphis Vegan Dine-outs and Potlucks group, and I wasn't about to miss out on a group meal at Jasmine Thai & Vegetarian Cuisine. I actually considered packing my own tortillas and stuffing the meal into them. But I didn't want to be the weirdo at the table pulling tortillas out of my purse (though I've totally stuffed guacamole and other condiments in my purse before, so I'm not sure what the difference is).

Anyway, here's our group tonight. Big crowd! Lots of new (and plenty of familiar) faces.

It's been years since I've dined at Jasmine, a mostly vegetarian Thai joint, and I'm not sure why I've waited so long. I adore this place, and there are so many vegan options that the menu is incredibly overwhelming. So much so that I tend to stick with a couple of old standards that I know and love there. One of those is this Crispy Orange Bean Curd, which is what I ordered again tonight.

It's made with fried tofu and vegetable fritters, and they're coated in a sweet and savory orange soy sauce. You just can't go wrong with fried veggies. The fritters, which are stuffed with broccoli and cauliflower, remind me a little of gobi manchurian, the Indo-Chinese Dish.

I may have eaten this the traditional way — with a fork. But never fear. I'm back on the taco wagon tomorrow, and I will be stuffing my leftover orange bean curd into tortillas. 

It's Fat Taco Tuesday!

I typically celebrate Fat Tuesday with Cajun food, king cake, and Abita beer. But I'm taco cleansing this week — making recipes from The Taco Cleanse cookbook by Austin vegans Wes Allison, Stephanie Bogdanich, Molly R. Frisinger, and Jessica Morris.

So I only had one of my three Fat Tuesday traditions — king cake! And the rest of the day was all tacos and sangria but more on that in a few. Here's my Peanut Butter Cup King Cake!

As I do every year, I turned to Kittee's amazing wealth of king cake recipes. I typically make her traditional cake and stuff it with cinnamon butter or, some years, vegan cream cheese and fruit filling. But this year, I went a little crazy and made her peanut butter chocolate king cake. It has peanut butter pastry, peanut butter frosting, and a chocolate mousse filling (made with tofu!). I brought this to work, and it was a hit. Only a tiny sliver was left at the end of the day. And just like last year, Toby (the reporter who sits in the cube next to me) got the baby. 

I know king cake isn't a taco, so I totally broke the all tacos, all week rule here. But hey, it's Fat Tuesday! But it's also Taco Tuesday, and I had the last of my Totcho Tacos for lunch. I'll miss them. I could probably eat totcho tacos for the rest of my life and be just fine with that.

Dinner was a new recipe from The Taco Cleanse — Soy Curl Fajitas!

These were fantastic! Soy Curls are sauteed with red and orange bell peppers and onions, cumin, and fajita seasoning. I served these on homemade flour tortillas with homemade cashew crema (both recipes from the book). Lots of Yellowbird Habanero Sauce on top! The only adjustment I made to the recipe was to cut back on the oil. It called for 1/4th cup, but I used a half-tablespoon. One thing I learned on the Abundance Diet last month is that you just don't need that much oil to make something taste delicious. Oh, and I only used 1 cup of Soy Curls instead of two cups. It made less tacos that way, but Soy Curls aren't sold around these parts. So I like to horde them. 

I'm hoping to work my way through the margarita chapter in The Taco Cleanse this week, but tonight, I went a little rogue and made a single-serve sangria instead. This isn't from the book. I had one glass of wine left in a bottle of cab sauv from the weekend, so last night, I added sliced apples and oranges and a shot of triple sec. I let that steep overnight, and tonight I served it with a splash of sparkling water. Sangria typically has brandy too, but I didn't have any, so here's my improvised sangria.

Taco Cleanse, Day 2

I'm on my second day of the Taco Cleanse! And I'm feeling amazing, because how can you not feel amazing when you're eating tacos for every meal? For one week, I'll be making recipes from The Taco Cleanse, the new satirical "cleanse" book by Austin-based taco scientists Wes Allison, Stephanie Bogdanich, Molly R. Frisinger, and Jessica Morris.

I wanted to try some Taco Yoga this morning, but I had an early morning meeting for work. So I had to skip my workout and just get straight to the taco-eating. Breakfast was the Supreme Bacon, Scramble, and Cheese Tacos from The Taco Cleanse.

These are made with the Wake and Shake Scramble (from the book), the Foundational Tempeh Bacon (from the book), Daiya cheddar, and corn tortillas. Oh my god, this scramble is amazing! When I was in Austin for Vida Vegan Con last May, I had the greatest scramble ever at Bouldin Creek Cafe, and this reminded me so much of that. Rather than scramble the tofu in a skillet, you shake it in a paper bag with nooch and spices (like Shake and Bake!) and bake it in the oven. The crumbled pieces separate and are individually coated. I did take Susan's advice (from Kittens Gone Lentil) and used 1/2 cup of nooch instead of a full cup because that seemed like a waste of perfectly good nooch. Also, the cubed tempeh bacon was out of this world. Love this taco!

Because I had such an early breakfast (6:30 a.m.!), I was hungry again by 10:30. And sadly, I didn't have a snack taco. But I did keep it Mexican-themed with some nectarine sprinkled with Tajin, a chili pepper-lime-salt for fruit. This brings out the natural sweetness in fruit and gives it a fun, spicy kick.

My lunch was leftover Vegan Chicken Fajitas from Imagine Vegan Cafe. And dinner was leftover Totcho Tacos. You can see pics of those in last night's post.

One cannot Taco Cleanse without supplementing with margaritas, and there are plenty of recipes in the book for those. I'll be working my way through the booze chapter this week, but tonight, I started with the very basic Fundamental Margarita — tequila, triple sec, lime juice, and salt. I've rarely had real margs like this. Typically, I order them at Tex-Mex restaurants, and they're made with a mix (probably one laden with high-fructose corn syrup). This pure margarita was so perfect. It had a lot less volume than I'm used to, but it feels good knowing that all the calories in this came from liquor and not extra sugary crap.