The Vegan 8 (simple healthy plant-based recipes)
Brandi Doming is a former model, who helped heal her husband’s gout, by creating tasty recipes without oil (or gluten). Her book The Vegan 8 has recipes with 8 ingredients or less (not including water and salt).
Read our post on food safety for people and pets. It’s best to just bin allium (onion family) and tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. For tinned foods, always remove lids fully or pull ring-pulls back over holes, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
We do need fats for good health, but in reality we don’t actually ‘need’ oil (olive oil used to only be sold in chemists). There is sometimes occasion to slather oil on recipes.
But actually if you are trying to lose weight or have serious illness like heart disease, it’s good to at least reduce the use of refined oils.
That does not mean you give up fats. It just means using olives instead of olive oil, and nuts instead of nut oils etc. Brandi does use coconut milk in some of her recipes, to replace dairy.
Recipes include:
- Roasted Gold Potatoes with Rosemary Sauce
- Bakery-style Blueberry Muffins
- Cream ‘Cheese’ Spinach Artichoke Dip
- Cajun Veggie & Potato Chowder
- Skillet Baked Mac n ‘Cheese’
- BBQ Bean Ball Sub
- No-Bake Chocolate Espresso Fudge Cake
To hit the same amount of fat and calories in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, you would need to eat 24 pitted green olives. 8 olives vs 1 teaspoon of olive oil gives a lot more food, with fibre and nutrients. A tiny dab of oil or lots of olives? I’ll take the olives. Chef Lindsay Nixon
