Author Archives: peteremartinauthor

GLUTEN FREE, OIL FREE, WHOLE PLANT RECIPES

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Search YouTube for “lentil flatbread” and you’ll find lots of videos. Here’s my version. Use red lentils cuz they break down easier than the others. Also because they are not only the most nutritious lentils but also the most nutritious member of the legume family as noted by my favorite nutrition expert, Dr. Michael Greger, in these two videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srkBZaF6VoA (49 seconds)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXxFdBwvLRE (5 minutes)

LENTIL BREAD RECIPE

(My version, adapted from others

Rinse and soak 1 cup red lentils overnight or at least a couple hours.

Preheat the oven to 425 °F.

Prep a baking sheet with a silicone mat. Some recipes use parchment paper with olive oil but don’t use the oil unless you’re okay with clogged arteries.

Drain and add the soaked lentils to a food processor, along with 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and some flavor ingredients. I like onions, jalapeno peppers, and garlic. And salt if you must.

Blend until smooth. Add water until it’s creamy. Spread as evenly as possible onto the silicone sheet.

Bake at 425 for 20 minutes or until it shows little brown patches.

After it cools for 5 minutes or so it should peel right off the silicone mat. If not, you didn’t bake it long enough.

Use it for a pizza crust or smear things on it such as creamy avocado, hummus, peanut butter, or Anja’s cauliflower butter (see next recipe).

VEGAN BUTTER

Here’s a great alternative for dairy butter from Anja’s Youtube channel, Cooking with Plants. It’s got a surprise ingredient – psyllium husk – so it might help you poop. Also a bit of turmeric, which is first on most lists of healthiest spices.

TEN SPICE SOUP

Here’s a terrific soup from Angela Liddon’s Oh She Glows YouTube channel. The recipe includes olive oil but skip that if you’re into living longer. Water or vegetable stock works well for sauteing the onions. She also has a spice blend with lots of ingredients. I’m sure it’s good but I always use Cajun seasoning and it works just fine (but it’s got salt).

https://ohsheglows.com/…/10-spice-vegetable-soup…/

BLACK BEAN BROWNIES

Chocolate Covered Katie has tons of brownie recipes on her YouTube channel. This black bean brownie recipe is the only one I’ve tried and it’s great but don’t use the coconut oil. Under the nutrition facts she suggests subbing peanut butter. I’ve tried that and it works; so does apple sauce.

https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/black-bean-brownies…/

WHY TO AVOID OIL, INCLUDING OLIVE OIL AND COCONUT OIL

Lots of my favorite doctors have videos about the health hazards of oil. Here are two from Dr. Greger, one about coconut oil and one about olive oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZzuPAD0_F8 (5 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4WD8Bm7s_I&t=2s (3 1/2 minutes)

REASONS TO GO VEGAN

Here’s a 6 minute video from another one of my favorite doctors, Dr. Neal Barnard, citing 21 reasons to go vegan in 2021. I’m guessing the same reasons apply to 2022.

ONCE THIS RIVER RAN CLEAR

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If my second book takes as long as the first I’ll be 129 when it’s published. I’m setting a launch date.

Once This River Ran Clear began as a two page character sketch in a college creative writing class. When I retired in 2005 I thought it was time to work that two page study into a book. Ten years later I started writing. Six years and thirty drafts after that, the book was born, screaming for release from the womb. In case you’re wondering, Um Um is one of the survivors. He’d have to be since he’s the one telling the story.

I’m misleading you about the number of drafts, of course.  It was more like fifty.

I’m also misleading you about the gestation period. In a sense the book was born in my youth. I grew up on Lake Pepin, the widest part of the Mississippi River, in Lake City, Minnesota. We fished a lot. We thought the walleyes from the Wisconsin side tasted better than Minnesota fish, so we’d motor across the river and start trolling. We were careful to avoid the fish nets which were tended by a gnarly old man. He looked robust enough to stand out on the frozen lake in winter to catch one walleye. Seventy years later he became Urs, a lonesome man who netted fish and sold them to a restaurant in a nearby small town, a man who was destined to be run over by progress (read “capitalism”), which was beginning to wreak havoc around 1950. I guessed at that last part.

So I’m not much of a writer. But I have written a few things: a dozen plays, designed for huge casts of young actors to present to family audiences; a couple silly melodramas and a vampire spoof, meant to be funny but mostly meant to place me and my wicked laugh in the villain’s role; newspaper articles that are witty or snarky, depending on your interpretation; about 15 hour-long sets of songs and scenes meant to make people laugh or cry about Minnesota history; and of course this one novel, which will spawn a sequel (more likely a prequel) in 2076. Since that will be America’s tricentennial year, it should have a patriotic flavor, which, to me, means it should advocate for kindness to all people and the elimination of nukes and guns.

I’m told this blog will help sell some books. I doubt it. What it might do, though, is get me writing about some of my favorite things, such as gardening, whole food plant based cooking, pacifism, and exploring southern Utah’s canyons.