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)