"Holy Moly!" Sauce Recipe + Perpetual Planetary/Health Imperatives
Increase, decrease, swap out any of these ingredients per your own preferences or allergies.
In case my chicken-scratch is too hard to read: 1 bunch of cilantro, 2 green onions, 1 clove of garlic, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar, 1/3 cup raw almonds (let me know how it is with roasted ones if that’s all you have), 1/2 cup water, and salt per taste.
Allergic to nuts? Try raw peptitas (pumpkin seeds) and adjust the rest of the flavors accordingly. Pepitas are a little less sweet than almonds, so you’d maybe want a touch more apple cider vinegar.
6.23.2020
Saturday was our first CSA pick-up of the season and there was rejoicing throughout the land. House Cappello adores Stone’s Throw Farm and we’ve missed their fresh and delicious offerings. Not only is Stone’s Throw organic, sustainably farmed, and managed by one of the sweetest/keenest families we know: their program is abundant and affordable (<—$36 a week, and by the end of the season we’ll have two counters overflowing from the weekly haul.)
The two complaints most often associated with CSAs are that people get “weird” things they don’t want to eat, or they received too much and they don’t know what to do with it.
First, the weirder the better. You want as much variance in your weekly line-up of plants as possible (docs recommend to do 30+ different plants) because your microbiome thrives via the fiber of plants and the more diversity the better. Your microbiome is like every other ecosystem: it requires MANY different individuals working together. The hardest working, most health promoting are your bacteria buddies that thrive off fiber (<—fiber only comes from plants!) because they produce short-chain fatty acids which are essential for robust health.
”Hooo Hooo, but you said ‘diversity’ is good, so my animal products should be ‘good for diversity’, right?!”
Here’s an alley-oop that makes my heart soar with the ease of response. I’ve covered this many, many, many, many, many, many times before: the bacteria and protein found in animal products actually RUIN your microbiome and set off an oxidative process that leads to multiple diseases, including the #1 cause of death in America: CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. It is scientifically noted again and again to be harmful for you to be eating animal products, and the only “diversity” you’re giving yourself is a feast of diseases to choose from.
Continue for: how to make our “Holy Moly!” Sauce (Q’s response at first taste: “HOLY MOLY! This tastes like guacamole! I want this on ALL my meals from now on!!!”) including its health benefit line-up; even more planetary imperatives (The Arctic hit 100.4 this week); and 2 full days of this family living-by-example and eating the cheapest diet, the most environmentally sustainable diet, the HEALTHIEST DIET: Plant-Based Whole-Foods.
Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward
Everything needed for a batch of “Holy Moly” Sauce (minus the 1/2 tsp of apple cider vinegar I forgot to add)
What to do with a bunch of cilantro (more than can fit in your herb saver) when you already have a fridge packed to the gills with fresh greens and meal-prepped wonders? You start kitchen wizarding ways to make that cilantro into a sauce that’ll keep well in a jar.
I get that some of y’all despise cilantro (you may be genetically predisposed to register cilantro’s aldehyde as a soapy taste), but for the rest of us cilantro-loving, guacamole gobbling souls this test-kitchen is a new favorite and will be repeated until the day I am off this earth.
If you like pesto, and you like guacamole, consider this the baby of those two green wonders; and it is a SUPER quick way to whip of a delicious sauce and to save some cilantro from going bad.
What does “Holy Moly!” have going for it (aside from deliciousness?):
Cilantro has Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Vitamin K; it is anti-inflammatory; reduces risk of heart disease; full of disease-decreasing/health-promoting antioxidants.
Green Onions (and the whole allium family) are so dang good for you! They also have Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Vitamin K; they are good for bone health and eye health due to their particularly powerful antioxidant line-up; they promote the same cardiovascular protection; and they have been studied and proven to lower cancer risk.
Almonds are a rich calcium source (<—Yep, plant-based calcium without the disease and environmental harm associated with cow’s breastmilk), they lower your cancer and heart disease risk, they help regulate blood sugars, they have healthy fats that actually LOWER your LDL.
So, instead of some food option that is going to hurt yourself and hurt the earth, maybe this week take a step back and try something new. Something that is delicious, is beneficial to your body, better for your kin’s heath, and kinder to the earth.
How easy is this sauce? You’re going to take the ingredients from above, shove everything into your blender, and it’s done in under a minute.
Don’t worry about chopping the onions or cilantro! The blender will do it for you! <—made the first batch this way, and the only reason the onions are cut up in the above pic is that I had diced them all up as a meal-prep and they were the only ones on hand; but the first batch had 2 long green onions as a swirl in there and they were pulverized soon thereafter. (The pic at the very top of this post is from Batch 1)
Tasted AMAZING alongside a bowl of quick-pickled cabbage, fresh greens, that turnip-radish salad we made, Crystal’s amazing tzatziki, and I took some quinoa and “refried” it (didn’t use oil, but heated it in a pan on the stove) with leftover seared mushrooms-with-peppers, and MY GOODNESS that was so easy and delicious! That recipe will be coming up soon. You could eat it hot, you could eat it cold, I could eat it attached to my face like a horse feeder and eat it all the livelong day.
”Holy Moly!” would also taste good on any wrap you’d put guac on, or any meal you’d serve quac with. You could eat with chips or vegetables as a dip too….Q would eat it right out of the jar with a spoon if I let him. :-)
Q’s “Weird” Morning Chalkboard: Telling him he had popcorn on his horizon.
Dawn nemesis.
Our neighborhood has its own community of roaming yet-owned-by-some-local-soul pets and this one likes to come into our yard and attack Wicket. When Malaprop was alive she’d chase him out of the yard with a vengeance, but now that she’s passed away, we have to keep an eye out for him and chase him ourselves.
Why can’t Wicket defend herself? Wicket is deaf. She has no idea he’s coming until his tooth and claw are already in her.
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: berry bread, fresh strawberries, cashew cream, and peanut butter tentacles.
What’s Q doing these days? Drawing all the dang time. This is less than 48 hours of drawings.
Current Plant-Based Crush: making shwarma style wraps with Crystal’s tzatziki.
Here seen: siete tortilla, lentil loaf, tzatziki, quick-pickled cabbage, romaine, and steam-seared mushrooms-and-peppers, with a side of radish-turnip salad.
Q’s current favorite smoothie: black smoothie. (<—blueberries, raspberries, spirulia, and oatmilk.)
Spirulina is a health wonder, and is a good source or iron, copper, and a great source of Omega Fatty Acids (it’s a vibrant DHA source).
“Holy Moly” sauce, quick-pickled cabbage, fresh greens, turnip-radish salad, Crystal’s amazing tzatziki, and “refried” quinoa.
This is a new filling family favorite.
Sunday Night Books
Monday Morning view. <3
Q’s on-the-go plant-based breakfast.
When you’re on the run, do you tend to shove some refined carb delight down your gullet? Does it feel momentarily delicious, but then you’re ravenous soon thereafter?
I used to do that and used to do the same with Q; and then I started learning about macro and miconutrients and how to fuel us with power instead of disease. Now an on-the-go-breakfast is the whole-food filling wonder of fibrous fruit and some protein-dense Omega 3 Fatty Acid awesome walnuts.
Guess who isn’t saying, “I’m Hunnnngry!” within the hour? The same two souls who can also continue on merrily until their plant-based lunch, even after picking strawberries in hot sun and 83 degree morning temps.
Belly full with plant-based power, we were up to Navarino Orchard by 8 to start picking more strawberries.
Why so much berry picking? It’s cheaper to pick them yourself, we can conserve waste by putting them in our own reusable freezer bags, and it gets this kiddo out into the sunshine for physical activity before it gets too hot. (He’ll start on schoolwork as soon as he’s home.)
Berry picking companion. <3
June in House Cappello: scraping paint outside, prepping up berries inside.
And Q: forever drawing, talking, eating. Repeat.
Here seen: Boba Fett and the Sarlacc.
Plant-Based Lunch: Loaded Potato Soup, quinoa, broccoli, steamed mustard greens, and that radish-turnip salad.
Vanilla Nice Cream with a peanut butter swirl.
Q - “If people know about peanut butter, how could they possibly still eat meat?? Peanut butter is just SO good! It’s… it’s better than anything in the world!!”
j - “Well, that’s a great question, and I hear you on the peanut butter love —I Love it too!— but some people are allergic to peanuts.…”
Q - “Well yeah, I know that…but if they aren’t allergic: they should be eating more peanuts, and if they aren’t allergic to bananas, then they should be eating Nice Cream instead of ice cream because it tastes better and it isn’t ruining the earth, it’s healthier for you, and it is DELICIOUS!”
Preach it, Tiny Sage. Preach it. <3
“Mama, I made you a drawing of a man in the moonlight talking to his Watcher pet.” <3
Shwarma-Style wraps for dayyyyyys. At this point we’re trying to work through Crystal’s tzatziki, but really we’d eat these dang things for every meal and still be food-dancing. These are so good that I have stuff piling up in the fridge that we could be eating, but we keep wanting to eat these instead.
Here seen: siete tortilla, lentil loaf, tzatziki, quick-pickled cabbage, romaine, roasted corn, bell peppers, and avocado.
Evening Yard Time: a yard parched from the span of hot/dry days and thankful for the afternoon’s rain.
The roses seen straight ahead from that hop arbor. These guys could not be more neglected and yet they thrive.
Lemon Verbena: my favorite scent in the yard.
Nightly Books
What’s the most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help your kin, community, millions of species, and planet? Transition as plant-based as possible.🌎♥️
Why? Plant-Based foods are environmentally imperative 🌎. They also promote ideal health💪 (which takes stress off our overburdened health care system), are inexpensive🙌, delicious🤤, & compassionate. 💕
Why imperative, though? 🤔We’re approaching (& have crossed) climate tipping points that will doom our kin & millions of other species. 😱📣Reducing/eliminating animal products is the *most impactful thing an individual can do* to prevent worse. 🌎🔥
Why? Animal Agriculture creates more emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, it’s tied to water waste/loss/pollution (<-- freshwater is our most precious resource💧), land loss/deforestation (<-- exacerbates climate change by reducing our ability to sequester carbon🔥🌎), ocean acidification (<-- FYI 50-85% of earth’s oxygen originates from oceanic plankton🌊) & vast species loss/extinction/suffering💔📣🌎
Plus, consuming animal products is tied to increased risk of cardiovascular disease❤️🩹, diabetes👎, cancer👎, and chronic disease👎; whereas Plant-Based feasting is linked to preventing/reversing some of our most common diseases (<— like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer); plus it promotes ideal health & robust strength (ie Olympians, Weightlifters, Endurance Athletes are thriving via PBWFs too). 🎉🙌♥️
What organizations are promoting plant-based diets for best health and environmental stability? National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, National Kidney Foundation, even the Parkinson’s Foundation.
We’re all overwhelmed in one way or another, but for the sake of our kin (and the millions of species we share this planet with) we need to start pivoting forward. As someone who once rarely ate green things & used to eat animal products at every meal, I can assure you that is possible, affordable, enjoyable, & purposeful to pivot Plant-Based. In fact, our whole family is now healthier/stronger than ever. 🙌♥️
Anecdotally, our son had failure-to-thrive, was also plagued with perpetual ear-infections/sinus-infections, and had an omnipresent runny nose. What was he eating? Grass-fed milk, organic/antibiotic-free/grass-fed/local meats, eggs from organic-fed/well-loved chickens from a neighbor, every meal came with vegetables, and we limited junkfood. He was healed via a plant-based diet: he’s launched out of that diagnosis and the last time he had a sinus-infection (or was sick at all) was in 2019 when he had some cheese at a school Christmas party. Before shifting to PBWF’s he was sick every month, and how he’s a robust, vital, thriving kiddo. 🙌🎉♥️
If you think any of the above sounds over-reached/absurd/impossible, please go read the links above. I understand the inclination to hackle-raise (<—because I was once totally there) but the science is clear: any step we make forward is imperative (<—and again “STEPS” is the focus. Don’t leap, just start making steps!). It’s as simple as starting with one meal a week and growing from there.💕
We have the ability (deliciously, healthfully, kindly, inexpensively) to *preserve/protect* the planet we share with millions of species & our kin. How are we going to use that power today?✌️🤟🖖
