A Kitchen Therapist’s Dilemma and Yummy GF/DF Sushi
Dinner time at my house is getting a bit too complicated over the past few months. I have been eating a mostly low-fat raw vegan diet for about 9 months now. I needs to be quite mindful about my fat and refined carb intake or I gain weight easily. My fiance is a GF and CF (casein-free) carnivore who eats 3,500 calories a day and struggles to keep his body fat up to healthy standards. He has one of those metabolic rate everyone wants. The man is not going to be giving up meat anytime soon. He likes to make complex dishes with multiple steps and takes extra care in presentation. I like to prepare one-pot dishes that have simple and speedy prep. On the surface we are culinary opposites. Somehow we have learned to enjoy cooking together and dining together despite these surface differences. Here is how we avoid the burnout caused by thinking that 2 different diets in the household necessitates the preparation of 2 separate meals every night. Notice most of these steps involved having fun.
Step 1: My left-brain needs to help me get organized and my right brain needs to help me get some creative menu ideas together. I read great food blogs and buy cookbooks to keep myself inspired.
Step 2: PLAN AHEAD and making planning ahead fun. My sweetie and I went on a date this afternoon to a local cafe and made a menu for the the entire week (including breakfast and lunch). He did not even notice he was doing ‘work’ because he was enjoying his soy latte and the ambiance of being at cafe and relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. A big benefit of planning menus ahead of time saves us a lot of money. Once he learned he was gluten and dairy intolerant my sweetie was forced to get in the habit of making extra food at dinner so he could bring it to work the next day for lunch. He now saves an average of $12/day ($3,120/year) by not going out for lunch everyday.
Step 3. Have theme nights: Mexican, Japanese, Comfort Food. This organizes our planning and harmonizes our menus so we don’t have to prepare two totally separate meals. Below is an example:
The theme was Japanese. We decided to make sushi together and have some GF friends over to enjoy it. We made raw vegan sushi based on Frederic Pautenade’s* recipe, and my sweetie just added tuna to his. With pickled ginger, wasabi, and a bit of GF tamari dipping sauce, you would have thought he was at an all you can eat for $150 sushi buffet. Yes, it took quite a bit of time chopping all the veggies. But it was a blast! I thin-sliced a ton of different veggies and made sushi ‘rice’ out of jicama. My sweetie thinks a ‘serving’ of rice is 2-3 cups, and he liked the taste of the jicama rice better than regular sushi rice as the sushi is much less mushy with the jicama. We had enough leftover prepped veggies to make another night’s dinner worth of sushi and a salad the next day for my lunch. In the end the elaborate sushi prep turned out to be a time saver as the next day my time in the kitchen was cut in half.
For sides I made a sesame rice and noodle salad on the side with lentils I sprouted myself , as well as steamed spinach with a ginger sauce. The results of our planning were delicious and made for a fun evening!
*Frederic Patenaude is the author of the best-selling e-book “The Raw Secrets”. He is currently giving away free access to his private library of over 100 exclusive articles along with a subscription to his newsletter Pure Health & Nutrition. Visit http://www.fredericpatenaude.com while charter subscriptions last.
