The American Vegetarian Cookbook from the Fit for Life Kitchen

Other Books by Marilyn Diamond with Harvey Diamond

FIT FOR LIFE

FIT FOR LIFE II: LIVING HEALTH

A NEW WAY OF EATING

COPYRIGHT

I have recommended certain brand-name products in this book. These products were selected on the basis of their value as perceived by me while I conducted my research for this book in 1987–89. When manufacturers of such products publicize my authorized recommendations, I want the reader to understand that these efforts did not in any way influence my selection of these products.

—Marilyn Diamond

Copyright © 1990 by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond's Fit for Life, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: December 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-57102-9

With great respect and great love,
this book is dedicated to
you who are now holding it
in your hands

We wish to share with you the encouraging words of health care professionals from all over the country who have endorsed the Fit for Life approach and ideals that inspired this book:

"Marilyn Diamond's new cookbook leads us with a gigantic step forward as we enter the last decade of this 20th century in pursuing this country's goals toward 'health and happiness.'"

Glenn H. Koepke, M.D.

Emergency Physician

St. Joseph Hospital

Tucson, Arizona

"Marilyn Diamond shares with us a sensible way to feed our kids and ourselves so that we can all be Fit for Life."

Joseph Girone, M.D.

Professor of Pediatrics

Temple University Medical School

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"The most important advice I can give my patients to improve their health and lifestyle would be to change their eating habits and follow the Fit for Life philosophy set forth in this book."

Toni Manos, M.D.

Emergency Medicine

Yonkers, New York

"This book is a masterpiece! I recommend this to my patients and to all others for optimal health. The wonderful recipes and ideas make for a simple, delicious nutritional lifestyle."

Victoria Arcadi, D.C.

Los Angeles, California

"The majority of chronic and life-threatening diseases most prevalent in our society can be prevented by adherence to a wholesome vegetarian diet as so very effectively set forth in Marilyn Diamond's new cookbook."

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

St. Joseph's Medical Center

Yonkers, New York

"Marilyn Diamond's new vegetarian cookbook is the guidebook for the nutritional revolution of the '90s. The service that the Diamonds have performed in spreading nutritional wisdom through Fit for Life is immeasurable."

Terry Grossman, M.D.

Granby Medical Center

Granby, Colorado

"Marilyn Diamond's new cookbook celebrates the joy of good food in a way that is perfectly in tune with all our latest up-to-date medical knowledge and then soars beyond it by overcoming all the confusion about good and bad cholesterol, triglycerides and lipids, because in these recipes, it is just not there. Use this book with peace of mind."

Edward Taub, M.D.

University of California Medical School

Irvine, California

"Clearly, vegetarian and near vegetarian diets have medical, economic, political and humanitarian benefits that are enormous in their scope. I applaud Marilyn Diamond for 'carrying the torch' with this fine book."

Joshua Leichtberg, M.D.

Medical Director

Suma Medical Group

Beverly Hills, California

"This new book provides a wonderful 'how to' approach for the novice in nutrition as well as the veteran. This book will inspire you to be bolder in the kitchen. Fit for Life principles have had a tremendously favorable impact on my patients and on me."

Barbara Beuckman, D.C.

Beuckman Chiropractic Center

Belleville, Illinois

"More than ever nutrition counseling plays a key role in diagnosis and treatment planning for the achievement of optimum dental health. I emphasize the Fit for Life principles set forth in Marilyn Diamond's new book. Personally I look forward to experiencing the health adventures therein."

Stanley Corwin, D.D.S.

Fellow of the Academy of General Dentistry

Los Angeles, California

"I cannot extol the virtues of this book enough. It is excellent! The recipes are delectable. With this book, offering food to others is a form of love."

Phyllis Terry-Gold, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist

Hofstra University

Hempstead, New York

"There is no illness, no condition that would not be improved—oftentimes dramatically—by a proper vegetarian diet. Marilyn Diamond has combined the best of traditional vegetarian knowledge with up-to-date touches that make vegetarianism extraordinarily enjoyable and readily available to all, regardless of previous eating habits."

Henry Golden, D.C.

International Sports Medicine Consultant,

Naturopathic Physician,

Licensed Acupuncturist, West Hills, California

"Vegetarianism through the Fit for Life approach is an exciting, healthy way of life. My own health experiences are a living testimony to me of the benefits of the lifestyle that Marilyn Diamond has set forth in this book."

Lynn Freeman, R.N.

Medical Center of North Hollywood

North Hollywood, California

"Cleverly disguised as a cookbook, Marilyn Diamond's new work is really a doorway to a future of vibrant physical health for you. It is a world-class collection of nutritional pearls and entertaining food lore. As a physician I have repeatedly observed Fit for Life proponents experiencing profound improvements in their health."

Michael Klaper, M.D.

Santa Cruz, California

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With all my love and gratitude, I wish to thank my family, for helping me and supporting me during the years of work that went into this book.

Harvey, for setting the example of commitment and dedication…

Lisa, for the endless hours of work with me to get the job done…

Beau, for the cheerful independence when Mom was too busy…

Greg, for saying "You can do it, Mom," when those words were much needed…

Mom, for teaching me how to cook… and advising me to write this book…

Dad, for the fatherly advice and moral support…

Linda, for willingly sharing recipes when so much else demanded attention…

Doris, for showing me there is always time to do something nice for someone else…

Grandma Ida, for being so inspiring and young at heart at 90 years of age…

To all the dear friends who were willing to lend assistance or expertise, I thank you, with love and appreciation…

Patti Breitman, Paul Obis, Jo Dawson, William Shurtleff, Richard Rose, Deo and John

Robbins, Jae Duckhorn, Albert Lusk, Alan Goldhammer, Cheryl Mitchell, and especially:

Nansey Neiman, my publisher, for believing in the book…

Fredda Isaacson, my editor, for helping to trim, organize and clarify…

Chuck Ashman, my friend, for saying "This is my life too."

A Personal Letter

Dear Reader,

In the four years that have passed since the release of Fit for Life I and Fit for Life II, many of you have written to us asking for more recipes. There have also been questions regarding the feeding of children and other family members who seem a little resistant to dietary improvement. People have asked about food products and kitchen equipment, and some have sent personal recipes that I have included in the following pages, whenever possible, for all to enjoy. Thank you all for taking the time to tell us about your successes, experiences, and concerns. You have been the inspiration for this book.

I am excited to welcome you to my vegetarian kitchen, a wonderfully happy kitchen devoted to great taste and good health!

Wonderful? Because the recipes you find on these pages are truly that. They really taste good!

Happy? You bet! When your kitchen is dedicated not only to pleasing your taste buds but also to supporting your health—and the health of those you love—here's what happens:

You feel happy!

Because the food tastes so good, and because you know it is good for you,

You really DO feel happy!

"Eating should be fun." That is a direct quote from our eleven-year-old Beau. I add, "Food should be delicious." Sometimes I feel that in an endeavor to make food healthier, many people have lost sight of both those important qualities. The psychological and emotional environment that surrounds a meal is just as important as what is on the plate. If we make our food choices from the wide variety of wholesome foods that are available to us and we approach the eating experience with the joy, reverence, and gratitude our food abundance deserves, we can reap all the health we desire. But taste is equally important. If you and your family and friends aren't truly loving what comes out of your kitchen, no amount of explanation about how healthy it is is going to evoke enthusiasm. FOR FOOD TO DO GOOD FOR PEOPLE, IT HAS TO TASTE GOOD FIRST!

You who are avid FIT FOR LIFERS, living faithfully by its principles, reaping the benefits of doing so, will find a world of new recipes and new information that can broaden your horizons. There are new techniques and ingredients to incorporate, valuable new options and possibilities that can help make vegetarian cooking the most exciting, innovative, relevant, and gourmet of all the present-day cuisines.

If you are one of the many people in today's world who have determined that it is time for you to remove certain harmful foods from your diet and eat more healthfully, you can be certain that this book supports your worthy determination. All cholesterol and saturated animal fat, all refined sugar and fiberless grains and almost all salt have been eliminated in this book to help you take a new step to a higher level of health in a pleasurable way, as you prepare one exciting new dish after another, all of which are based on healthful ingredients.

Fit for Life is a fluid philosophy, based solidly on physiological principles but necessarily flexible to accommodate psychological and social situations. For those times when food combining, fruit in the morning, or omission of certain favorite ingredients may not be useful, this book offers good-tasting, viable options. As I include these recipes, I think specifically of health-minded mothers with children who are now out of the "trusting" toddler years. At seven, eight, or nine years of age, these children are voicing the need to "fit into life" with their peers. This is a very important need that must be acknowledged. Children at this time of life want their food to look like everyone else's. No "weird stuff"—know what I mean? While I in no way imply that you should condone a junk-food diet, I do suggest that for those relatively few precious years your children spend in your kitchen, go out of your way to prepare the foods they like as healthfully as you can, and avoid allowing food to become an issue that gives anybody "a stomachache." But all the while, educate them. Tell them what you've learned. Few adults realize that, given the knowledge, many children begin to make food choices to perpetuate their own health.

By including as much variation as possible in the recipes, I also think of all the letters I have received from people in relationships—people who are personally motivated to make changes but who find their friends or spouses reluctant to embrace the idea that the health, happiness, and energy that come from better eating are worth a "little" improvement at the dinner table. Like children, these "resistant ones" need familiar food, and they resent having what they like "taken away" from them and replaced by something they don't understand. The broader, more forgiving recipes included here will work well to keep them satisfied and enthusiastic, to get their energy up and their cholesterol level down, and help them pull in their belts a few notches. There are also lots of wholesome, festive foods that you can offer to friends and family willing to eat anything delicious but unwilling to jump on a philosophical bandwagon. For all of you—mothers and others—who want to cook more healthfully but have simply thrown in the towel because it involves too much change from what you may be accustomed to, this book is for you.

For those who feel they don't have the necessary talent in the kitchen to be effective, this book is for you, too! Men and women who never cooked before in their lives have become wonderfully proficient—even creative—because of the simplicity of recipes like these and the "I feel so good" results from eating better. For all those active and energetic "seasoned citizens" in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, who wrote to us to express their appreciation for the improvements in their lives, here are more easy recipes to keep you feeling confident about your health.

For those who don't have time for food preparation—I know there are millions of you out there in this predicament—there are the many "FIX-IT-FAST" recipes that take from ten minutes to just under one hour for a whole meal.

In other words, this is a book for EVERYBODY! As an inveterate nourisher, I can't bear to leave anyone out, even if it means stretching fundamental principles now and then or combining two or three philosophies at a time to be inclusive. Food is a personal issue. There are many food philosophies, all with something good to contribute, but no one food philosophy works for everyone all the time. The best we can do in our eclectic society is to learn to become eclectic about food. I urge you to do what works for you at all times, without ever feeling apologetic or guilty. Those are two emotions that have no place around food!

In these changing times, flexibility is the key to success in anyone's kitchen. Since as a species we are physiologically similar but psychologically and emotionally diverse as snowflakes, the mentality of a short order cook, open to all desires, will help us when we prepare foods for others. Your willingness to accept that everybody is at a different level of evolution will be greatly appreciated. When you've thought to include "something for everyone," your gratification will come when they smile and say, "That was really good!" When your child exclaims, "All right, Mom!" (or "All right, Dad!") after enjoying the "healthiest" meal possible for that moment in time, you'll know a sense of achievement.

Thank you, once again, dear reader, for motivating this work. May the recipes and ideas on the pages that follow make your life easier. May they make you and your loved ones healthier and happier. Working together, may we revitalize what has always united our species in joyous celebration—the food on our tables. And, in doing so, may we revitalize ourselves and our planet. With LOVE as our main ingredient, it is our power to bring forth from our kitchens the very substance of LIFE—and the right nourishment to lead us into a future full of LOVE!

I love you,

May the seeds of love be planted

In the hearts of your children who gather,

With the water of forgiveness,

May they grow…

Dispeller of Darkness,

Lord of Creation,

Mother of Humanity,

Ruler of all Nations,

Master of the starry skies,

Creator of the wind's caress,

Shine a little tenderness,

On your children in the Wilderness.

—Eliza Gilkyson

Legends of the Rainmaker

Gold Castle Records

Los Angeles, California

Introduction

THE Fit for Life principles are an international phenomenon. With over 7 million copies in print, translated into sixteen languages our books have reached millions of people and the ideas we have shared have had worldwide impact. People have experienced an immensely enhanced quality of life through improvement in diet; yet the question arises over and over again: How can we eat better and still love what we're eating? The answer is in this book.

The food we Americans have loved over the last several decades has brought us some pretty serious trouble, and we have exported our problem as well. Our fads and customs have set trends around the world. We wear jeans; the world wears jeans. We eat junk; people clamor for it from the Ginza to the Champs-Elysées! One Middle Eastern family who moved to the United States proudly put their three-year-old in an American preschool, where his teeth decayed and he gained a great deal of weight. Why? The teachers reported that every lunchbox the child brought was filled with sodas, sugary pastries, potato chips, and cookies. His parents honestly thought that these items represented the good foods that made Americans big and strong. They certainly made us big; because of those foods many Americans don't or can't fit into their jeans. As other populations increasingly embrace American junk food, their jeans are likely to get tighter, too. But Americans can set better trends. When books like Fit for Life become popular around the world, and Americans go through the process of getting back into shape, the world watches with a vested interest. That's very good news for the future of the planet.

Having accepted for years the disenfranchising idea that when health eluded us it was not in our power to understand the causes or do something about them, today "we the patients" of the past decades have become "we the participants." At the beginning of the decade of the '90s, we have responded to the challenge made in 1979 by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph Califano; and the Surgeon General, Julius Richmond, that the health of the American people depends on what they are willing to do for THEMSELVES, and not on what others are willing to do for them. Open to all empowering ideas, we are now far more motivated than ever before to learn what individuals can do to become fit and well, and stay that way. We value our health. We value health for our loved ones. And we are willing to do whatever we can to ensure both.

Doing whatever we can certainly spills over into our behavior in the kitchen; but for those who cook, these exciting times can also be confusing and frustrating. In the world of cooking, everything is changing. Many "red, white, and blue" ingredients—which were once the mainstay of American food preparation—have been discredited. But although we are willing to stop using them, we are not quite sure what to use instead. How can we put together palate-pleasing meals that our families and friends will enjoy and request without the refined oils, white sugar, white flour, and abundance of butter, milk and cheese, eggs, red meat, bacon and sausage, salt, and canned and processed staples that once we used so routinely and nonchalantly? Now that we know such a diet not only forced us into larger and larger sizes but also brought us the dubious premiums of heart disease, cancer, and stroke, we need to adopt a new approach to cooking.

This new approach comes to you from the Fit for Life kitchen. The solutions are easy and rewarding, quick and exciting. These good and good-for-you foods are not difficult to prepare and certainly do not demand a big investment of your time. Every recipe has been timed, and you will be pleased to find that most of them fall into the "Fix-it-Fast" range of ten to thirty-five minutes. In this book, the techniques are deliberately simplified to save time and effort, so that even the least experienced cook will be guided toward healthful creativity.

The ingredients needed are, for the most part, readily available in the fresh-food section of your supermarket, with an occasional trip to your local health food store for some staples. On pages 35–44, I have prepared an up-to-date shopping list that will introduce you to the excellent ingredients and products now available from the natural foods industry and from the more progressive commercial food manufacturers. These healthful substitutes for many of the common, chemical-laden ingredients are of superb quality. There is also a list of mail order houses that can supply many useful items when marketing time and access are limited. In addition, a chart of food values shows you unequivocally that everything your body needs to be healthy is available from natural sources.

Synthesizing today's popular trends in healthful eating and our natural love of many different cuisines, the recipes on the following pages transform French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and Mexican favorites into up-to-date versions of our national favorites. You'll find innovation and excitement in even the simplest of recipes, and you'll learn how to bring wholesomeness, balance, and artistry to each meal.

This book contains everything you need to know about preparing delectable meals that will keep you and your family in shape and bursting with high energy for maximum harmony, productivity, and creativity. In fact, you will find that this food makes you joyful, for it supports, rather than undermines, the integrity of your body and the sanctity of your life. Big promises? Wait and see what results you get!

The fact that so many people are interested in preparing good food that is also good for them heralds the possibility of what many people are already calling the "Twenty-first Century of Health." We are brother and sister pioneers in the kitchen! Certainly our interest in preparing this high-quality food will affect the health and happiness of future generations.

Since "we are what we eat," this book is my affirmation that wholesome and healthful food can help bring out all that is strong, beautiful, and harmonious in the human species. So let's tie on our aprons and begin to discover together a new path we can follow that will affect the very fiber of our existence. Whatever you do, do it from the heart. Then you can invite your family and friends to join you at a table full of Love and Life! It is an honor for me to share this experience with you.

Let's proceed together now into the rewarding endeavor of preparing food that is Fit for Life!

What This Book
Can Do for You

by Harvey Diamond

THE American people need support to follow more seriously the recommendations of the former U.S. surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop. In his "Report on Nutrition and Health," published in October 1988, Dr. Koop left no doubt about the urgent need to alter our eating habits to stem the growth of disease that besets our population. Presently in the United States, 2.1 million people die annually from all causes of death. Diet plays a role in a full 68 percent of these deaths! If you remove suicide and unintentional injuries such as auto accidents from the list of causes, the number of deaths to which diet is a contributing factor is a whopping 80 percent! Those are numbers that demand our immediate attention. Fortunately, Dr. Koop had the wisdom and dedication as surgeon general to take the appropriate measures to help protect the American people from further unnecessary suffering and death.

This landmark report is a comprehensive compilation of over 2,000 scientific studies of the most rigorous nature. It states categorically that our standard, fat-laden American diet is, in Dr. Koop's words, "killing millions prematurely and ruining the lives of tens of millions." In discussing the wealth of research leading to this conclusion, Dr. Koop said that "the depth of the science underlying this report's findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964."