Health Cooking Challenge - Fast Food

For the second Healthy Cooking Challenge we will be taking Aisling’s suggestion and making fast and healthy vegan food.

Here are the rules:

1) No animal flesh or animal products (aka vegan)

2) Emphasis should be on whole foods, such as veggies, fruits, nuts, legumes and unrefined grains...keep commercial products to a minimum when possible

3) No sugar (although stevia, agave, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup, and maple syrup are okay)

4) As low fat as possible

5) The more veggies and fruits you use the higher the nutrition will be

6) Enter as many times as you like

7) Prep and cooking time should be 30 minutes or less. The goal is a “thirty-minute meal” but much healthier, and hopefully more creative, than Rachel Ray.

Judging Criteria:

1) 50% of the score: Healthfulness of the recipe as determined by overall nutrition. I will be compiling the nutrition for each recipe per calorie and looking at the overall vitamin and mineral profile compared to the RDA. Raw dishes will tend to score higher, as will things that are heavy on the veggies and fruit. Seeds tend to be more healthy than nuts, beans would be next with grains being the least nutritious. You may want to keep this in mind when working on your recipes.

2) 30% of the score: Creative use of ingredients. This can be either how your use them (example cabbage as noodles), or the specific ingredients you are using.

3) 20% of the score: Presentation. We will be looking at your presentation not your photography skills.

We will be using the same Flickr Group that Rose set up last month for people to upload their photos and describe their recipe (specific ingredients with measurements and instructions) and provide a link to their blog (if they have one). Flicker accounts are free, so participants just set up an account and join the challenge group. If anyone doesn’t want to bother with a Flicker account, they can send their entries directly to me (use the email on my profile page) and I will post them on the Flickr group page for you. Please remember to include a photograph since that is how Flickr works. Participants should upload their entries to the Flicker group page at their leisure, anytime before the deadline (February 28, midnight your time).

If anyone needs help with Flickr feel free to ask. I hadn’t used it until last month. It is free and easy to use. Trust me on the ease of use. If this old dinosaur could do it without many problems it must be intuitive. All you need is a yahoo email account and then you can log into the group (link above) and post your recipe and photo.

Depending on the timing of all the recipe submissions I may need a few days to calculate the nutritional information for each recipe and set up the spreadsheet to compare them all and confer with the other judges. Please be certain that I have a way to contact you (email or blog) in case I have any questions about ingredient quantities or serving sizes.

For judging, Rose and I will be standing judges, and there will be a guest judge that may change monthly, for a total of 3 judges. The judges may participate in the challenge by submitting recipes but are not eligible to win. We are targeting March 7 as the date to announce the winner.

The winner or winners will be announced in a blog post along with a link to the all the submissions. I will be compiling all the entries into an e-book and will email it to each participant. This would require each of you to consent to having your recipe “published” which you will be doing by submitting the recipe. It will only be published in the e-book for the challenge and nowhere else.

The prize for winning this challenge is a blog badge that you can put on the sidebar of your blog, similar to a blog award. Additionally each monthly challenge winner will automatically receive an e-book of recipes for each subsequent challenge this calendar year whether they participate in future challenges or not. Although of course we hope the winners will continue to participate.

As each of you submit a recipe I will be updating this post with a running list at the bottom of the post including the blog address (if available otherwise the name of the participant) and the specific recipe. That will allow you to double check that I have seen your recipe and begun calculating the nutritional information. I will check the Flickr page regularly for updates.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. Additionally if you have an omni recipe that you would like to veganize and don’t know where to start let me know. I am happy to give you ideas.

Good luck to all of you, and I can’t wait to see your creativity!

Recipes Submitted:

Hummus and Bagel Sandwich - Mary (mygreendiet)
Taco Salad Lite with Mango Salsa - Rose (dandelion)

Healthy Cooking Challenge – Family Favorites Winner

We were so impressed with all the healthy recipes which were submitted. When we calculated the nutritional numbers there was no clear winner. We added categories for nine (9) additional vitamins and minerals and again no clear winner, but we were at least down to two recipes. The two recipes evenly split the vitamins and minerals each being the overall winner of three items.

Given this tie in nutrition we were hoping for a winner in creativity or presentation. Again, still no clear winner. We considered having two winners but decided that we just need to bite the bullet and get serious. Thankfully we had our third judge because it took three votes to come to a conclusion. A heart-felt congratulation goes to:

• Oraphan at Easy Veggie for her submission of Brown Rice and Kale soup with Tofu and Ginger. We love that she used brown rice instead of white, added tofu for protein, kale for vitamin A and K, and ginger for antioxidants.

Thank you again to all of those of you that submitted recipes. They were all wonderful and I know I am not the only one that was inspired to make my own variation of them. My husband thinks I need to make all the recipes so that he can choose by taste. Isn’t he helpful? See why I have to keep my eye on him?

Now that we have this challenge under our belts Rose and I will be finalizing the definition of the next challenge. We are definitely going with a fast food theme. Since I will be stuck in the house all weekend due to the blizzard (and possibly longer) I should have the next challenge posted soon.

I hope you are all having a great weekend!

Healthy Cooking Challenge - Family Favorites

Sorry for the delay in posting the recipes from the challenge. I have had a few things going on this week that has kept me busier than usual, which didn't leave much time to understand posting from Flickr. Here are the recipes that were submited for the challenge:

Our first recipe was my Cream of Tomato Soup

Rose from Dandelion submitted an Orange, Avocado, Fennel and Raddichio Salad

Mary from mygreendiet.com submitted two recipes the first was a Stuffed Heirloom Tomatoes

and Mary also submitted a Summer Chopped Salad

Janet from Meatless Mama submitted a Spinach and Mushroom filled Tortilla

Sarah the Ordinary Vegetarian submited a Broccoli Salad

Heather from Where's the Beach submitted a Broccoli and Wheat Berry Casserole

Oraphan from Easy Veggie submitted a Brown Rice, Tofu and Kale Soup

Morgan from Abby's Army submitted a Creamy Potato Soup

Everyone submitted great recipes. I loved seeing the very different directions that these recipes went in. By having an open ended theme we got a broad cross section of recipes which I really enjoyed. I need to confer with the other two judges this evening on the winning recipe. I hope to have that posted tonight or by the latest tomorrow morning. All the recipes submitted were great and I got some great ideas from these ladies. I will be sending them each an e-book of the recipes over the weekend.

Update:

The nutritional information for the recipes will be posted on Flick this evening.  I am posting it as a comment to each recipe.

Healthy Cooking Challenge: Family Favorites

For the first Healthy Cooking Challenge I thought we start by taking a family favorite recipe and making it healthy and vegan. This can be a recipe you grew up eating, or something you make for your family now.


Here are the rules:
1) No animal flesh or animal products (aka vegan)
2) Emphasis should be on whole foods, such as veggies, fruits, nuts, legumes and unrefined grains...keep any commercial products with added fat sugar or salt to a minimum when possible
3) No sugar (although stevia, agave, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup, and maple syrup are okay)
4) As low fat as possible
5) The more veggies and fruits you use the higher the nutrition will be
6) Enter as many times as you like (any type of dish and cuisine is appropriate for this challenge)


Judging Criteria:
1) 50% of the score: Healthfulness of the recipe as determined by overall nutrition. I will be compiling the nutrition for each recipe per calorie and looking at the overall vitamin and mineral profile compared to the RDA. Raw dishes will tend to score higher, as will things that are heavy on the veggies and fruit. Seeds tend to be more healthy than nuts, beans would be next with grains being the least nutritious. You may want to keep this in mind when working on your recipes.
2) 30% of the score: Creative use of ingredients. This can be either how your use them (example cabbage as noodles), or the specific ingredients you are using.
3) 20% of the score: Presentation. We will be looking at your presentation not your photography skills.

Rose set up a Flickr Group for people to upload their photos and describe their recipe (specific ingredients with measurements and instructions) and provide a link to their blog (if they have one). Flicker accounts are free, so participants just set up an account and join the challenge group. If anyone doesn’t want to bother with a Flicker account, they can send their entries directly to me (use the email on my profile page) and I will post them on the Flicker group page for you. Participants should upload their entries to the Flicker group page at their leisure, anytime before the deadline (January 31, midnight your time).

If anyone needs help with Flickr feel free to ask. I hadn’t used it until yesterday. It is free and easy to use. Trust me on the ease of use. If this old dinosaur could do it without any problems it must be intuitive. All you need is a yahoo email account and then you can log into the group (link above) and post your recipe and photo.

Depending on the timing of all the recipe submissions I may need a couple of days to calculate the nutritional information for each recipe and set up the spreadsheet to compare them all. Please be certain that I have a way to contact you (email or blog) in case I have any questions about ingredient quantities or serving sizes.

For judging, Rose and I will be standing judges, and there will be a guest judge that may change monthly, for a total of 3 judges. The judges may participate in the challenge by submitting recipes but are not eligible to win. We are targeting February 7 as the date to announce the winner.

The winner or winners will be announced in a blog post along with a link to the all the submissions. I was thinking it would be nice to compile all the entries into an e-book and email it to each participant. This would require each of you to consent to having your recipe “published”. I need to check with “the powers to be” on this but will probably be emailing each participant a quick note to get their approval to include their recipe in the e-book.

The prize for winning this challenge is a blog badge that you can put on the sidebar of your blog, similar to a blog award. Additionally each challenge winner will automatically receive an e-book of recipes for each subsequent challenge this calendar year whether they participate in future challenges or not. Although of course I hope the winners will continue to participate.

As each of you submit a recipe I will be updating this post with a running list at the bottom of the post including the blog address (if available otherwise the name of the participant) and the specific recipe. That will allow you to double check that I have seen your recipe and begun calculating the nutritional information. I will check the Flickr page at least once a day for updates.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. Additionally if you have an omni recipe that you would like to veganize and don’t know where to start let me know. I am happy to give you ideas.

Good luck to all of you, and I can’t wait to see your creativity!

Recipes Submitted:

Cream of Tomato Soup - Vegan Epicurean (Alicia)
Orange, Avocado, Fennel and Raddicho Salad - Dandelion (Rose)
Stuffed Heirloom Tomatoes - My Green Diet (Mary)
Summer Chopped Salad - My Green Diet (Mary)
Spinach Mushroom Tortillas - Meatless Mama (Janet)
Broccoli Slaw - Ordinary Vegetarian (Sarah)
Broccoli and Wheat Berry Casserole - Where's the Beach (Heather)
Creamy Potato Soup - Abby's Army (Morgan)
Ginger Rice Soup with Tofu and Kale - Easy Veggie (Oraphan)

Healthy Cooking Challenge

I have a quick question to ask you all. Since it is a new year and everyone is focused on health that gave Rose and I an idea for a healthy cooking challenge. We were thinking it would be fun for everyone to post a healthy recipe (or two or three) to share with each other. This would accomplish a few things. Give all of us a few more dinner ideas, and allow us to share in some of everyone’s favorite recipes. It will also be a great way to get to know each other a little better.

Rose and I have been pondering the specifics today and how we would accomplish this logistically. She has graciously offered to help with some of the behind the scenes work that will be required. One of the benefits for all the participants is that I will be calculating the nutritional stats on each recipe as part of the judging criteria.

We are still working out the details and the specifics of the first challenge but will focus mostly on healthy food (definition will be included in the challenge post), then creative use of ingredients, and finally creative presentation. For this first challenge we were thinking of asking everyone to take a family favorite recipe and make it healthy.

Please leave a comment if you may be interested in participating in the challenge. We want to gauge interest before we put a ton of time into the background work. You don’t need a blog to participate, just a recipe and a photo of it. If the first challenge goes well we thought we would have a new one each month. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.