Gearing up for the New Year

Gearing up for the vegan kickstart:

1. I am looking forward to my morning scrambled tofu again. That stuff is just damned-tasty.
   
   


2. I think I'll probably make some Indian dishes:
   
   
   
   • I remember making Cauliflower and red lentils in balti sauce, and although it was tasty, the recipe needed some tweaking.
     
     
   • Aloo gobhi will likely make an appearance as well. I'll have to peruse some vegetarian Indian recipes & blogs for more ideas.
     
   
   
   • Oh! There are those spicy chickpea dishes, Channa Masala (chickpea curry) or Aloo Chhole (chickpeas with potatoes). One of my local Indian restaurants makes killer Aloo Chhole. I could just eat that with garlic naan and call it a meal.
     
   
   
   • I know that there are some excellent vegetarian curries with spinach as well. I need to hunt those up.
   
   
   • I've got a few recipes for naan and onion-stuffed kulchas, and will give those a whirl to accompany the Indian dishes.
     


3. I don't want to rely as much on the fake meats & soy cheeses; they seem to be every bit as over-processed as any sodium-filled crap out of a box or a can. More reliance on pulses and beans for protein. The goal is to eat the least -processed foods as possible. I'll make some exceptions for tofu and tempeh. Those are pretty great.
   


4. I can't even begin to count how many different rice and beans recipes I have, from the outstanding Cuban-style black beans and rice from Dinosaur BBQ, to Mexican-style, to a great Cajun red beans and rice recipe. More rice and beans. More Beano, too. ;-)
   


5. Now is as good a time as any to cut out my Diet Coke habit. It's insane, really. I have been drinking hardly any water at all, and that is just not good. 6 - 8 glasses of water a day is my new goal.
   


6. Again, for snacks, I'll opt for nuts and fruit, but if I feel hungry, I'll start with a tall glass of water. I recall reading somewhere reputable that lots of us are so over-fed that we mistake signs of thirst for hunger. So when we're reaching for a bag of potato chips or something else fairly laden with empty calories and salt, what we really ought to be doing is downing a glass of water.