Righteously Delicious!
Vegan. Kosher. Tasty. Whole foods plant based.
Happiness in your mouth. Easy on your gut. Smooth finish. Gratitude and goodness for the planet and its denizens.
About Righteously Delicious
Vegan.
My best friend from high school turned me on to a “Forks over Knives” diet. She had chronic health problems and over the years put on weight and felt down from her worrisome symptoms. She informed me one day, that after adopting a strictly vegan diet with no processed foods, she didn’t have chronic pain, her cholesterol and weight dropped, and her depression lifted. I made mental note as I continued my happy eating and cooking of anything in Bon Appétit magazine that appealed to me. I continued to eat animals and animal products as I tilted toward vegetarianism due to my love of vegetables.
More recently, one of my vegetarian friends was scared into a vegan diet after his doctor warned him, she would prescribe statins for his high cholesterol. Once he stopped guzzling coffee with cow milk and replaced red yeast rice supplements for his milk chocolate and pastry treats, his cholesterol dropped to normal levels, and he lost a few pounds. My friend was pleased and relieved with these results and his doctor was surprised.
It was just around coronavirus opening season and I had thought to myself that I’m going to need to get on a “Forks over Knives” diet sooner rather than later. Both sides of my family have genetic health conditions that can be exacerbated or mitigated by diet (e.g., heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes). Why not eat this way by choice in my 40s? I wouldn’t have to eat this way by medical necessity when I’m in my 60s. Good choice Esther! I immediately lost weight without trying, felt and looked great.
I transferred my curiosity about other food cultures and experimentation with haute cuisine toward healthy cooking and eating. I have a lot to learn and it’s interesting. Vegan magazines are not as glossy as mainstream cooking magazines. The friend that introduced me to the “Forks over Knives” diet recently told me that being vegan means you are opposed to slaughtering animals. While I am generally opposed to slaughter and have chosen not to kill animals for my career or hobby, I have never felt guilty about eating animals or thought ill of people that benefit from this practice. I wear leather shoes and use honey in my hair as frizz control. I am disgusted with the smell of some animals (dead and alive). I feel sorry for animals that are raised for human consumption. My vegan diet is a moral statement about me. I yam what I eat – entirely wholesome, rooted, earthy, frequently fruity, judiciously juicy and nearly nuts.
Kosher.
By virtue of a food being vegan, it is kosher. However, kosher food is not necessarily vegan. As it applies to Righteously Delicious recipes, I will share what I might make for Shabbat and Jewish holidays in lieu of more traditional foods that are associated with those meals.
Kosher means “fit” or “properly prepared” and refers to Jewish dietary commandments of what is permissible for consumption. Kosher food preparation is intricately religious and lends itself to a traditional and observant Jewish identity and way of life, especially around life cycles and religious events. The laws of kashrut encompass all activities associated with food including food preparation and cookware.
It is important to ensure that the kosher ingredients are properly prepared for consumption. You can do this by washing and inspecting grains, fruits and vegetables before cooking with or eating them. In addition to the obvious hygienic purpose, the further cleansing is to verify these foods are free of non-kosher additions (i.e., bugs and worms). Likewise, packaged and processed grains and produce (including wine) can be kosher certified to indicate all steps of the food preparation and packaging are kosher.
Jews that keep kosher usually strive to elevate their food ingestion by saying words of gratitude to God before and after eating. By pausing before and after eating to acknowledge the food source, kosher keepers consider their relationship with food as nourishment for their body and soul.
Tasty.
My love of food is qualified as a love for the potential of delicious food.
The gustatory sense has receptors for the tastes of sweet, sour, salt and bitter. The Japanese have a fifth taste called umami which is the quality of deliciousness. Our taste buds respond to flavor and our other sensory receptors respond to temperature, texture, smell, chewing and swallowing of food. We all have different flavor profiles. Consider that all eight of our senses can be involved in food preparation, eating, digestion and elimination.
There must be something to using taste descriptions for personality. You are so sweet! She’s sucking on lemons. He’s a salty one. They are a bitter person. That’s such an unsavory character. There is even a physiological basis for aspects of our personality and food preferences. Hans Eysenck did a study that showed introverts produced more saliva than extroverts after having the same amounts of lemon drops squeezed on their tongue. It would appear that an introvert's taste receptors are more physiologically responsive - as measured by saliva, than extroverts to the sour taste.
Putting it together, our sensory system is responsive in different ways to food and cuisines. By raising awareness of our physiological responses (alerting or calming our nervous system) to taste, we can create gustatory experiences that hit our sweet spot!
Whole foods plant based.
I started my Righteously Delicious diet based on the "Forks over Knives" philosophy of utilizing whole foods and plant-based ingredients that are minimally processed. Since age 20, I have been cooking for myself and others and trying out new recipes. The main change in my lifestyle since 2020 is that I am cooking more for myself and others rather than dining out. The vegan options offered at restaurants cannot compete with homemade food when it comes to cost, time, quality, freshness, simplicity and health.
The main reason I committed to a whole food plant-based diet at the start of a pandemic was to direct my health and improve my relationship with others around food. I am a firm believer in Hippocrates’ philosophy that food can be my medicine. By embellishing on nature’s bounty, I act as creative partner in my health and aging process.
After two years of experience with a whole-foods plant-based diet and the positive results, I have recurring fantasies that people will replace their fast-food purchases with Righteously Delicious home cooked meals. The menu would appeal to households of all ages, budgets and food preferences since you are choosing from an array of seasonal and regional items and determining the level of culinary fussing you desire. The cost of the meal, home ambiance, quality of food and service would adhere to the Righteously Delicious spirit.
What is the Righteously Delicious spirit? It is vegan and emphasizes vegetables, fruit, grains and legumes. It is kosher and fit for consumption. It is tasty and linked to sensory receptors that alert and calm our nervous system. It is whole foods plant based which draws on foods medicinal properties. It is happiness in your mouth because it provides a gustatory experience of pleasure. It is easy on your gut because the interoceptive sense is honed and food decisions are made based on the anticipation of how the body will receive the food that passes through it. It provides a smooth finish with minimal food waste and an elimination process that is efficient and pleasant. It is gratitude and goodness for the planet and its denizens with a mindset of appreciation and awe at the culinary possibilities.
Happiness in your mouth.
Delicious food is pleasurable. Pleasure gives us good feelings. Therefore, delicious food is a source of happiness. This is not merely epicurean logic. Every meal we prepare is an opportunity to influence our moods and those with whom we share our food, whether it is our family, friends or those in need of physical or spiritual uplifting.
Gratitude is an attitude we can cultivate. We appreciate that eating delicious food can bring pleasure, joy and meaning. If we intentionally apply the five love languages to ourselves and others with regard to food, we can bring about pervasive happiness. The five love languages refer to the ways that we express and experience love and affection.
They are:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
What are your love languages around food? It’s worth pondering since it will bring you happiness and the behaviors that follow along with those feelings.
Easy on your gut.
By gut, I mean your digestive system. I also mean your instincts and your brave actions. A Righteously Delicious diet considers how your insides will receive your food. The mouth is the point of entry that receives the sensory experiences on the spectrum of gustatory pleasure. The food can be alerting because it requires our jaw to work hard to break it down and calming because our mouths are conduits for passing nutrients into our body. The gut is where our bodies determine at the sensory motor levels that the food promotes health and healing. The body is programmed to interact with food in specific ways so once it passes through our hands and mouth, the rest of the digestion experience is, in the parlance of our times, non-consensual.
It's important to know what foods the body accepts and rejects. By making the food that the entire body wants and needs to eat rather than have someone that is appealing to the taste buds only prepare the food, we maximize the food’s positive impact in and on our bodies.
It behooves us to make predetermined, conscious gut decisions that allows us to “rest and digest.” Giving the body the foods that it needs and grows to want is self-love. The better we take care of ourselves, the better we are able to spread this type of loving kindness, whether it is sharing recipes, cooking for ourselves and others and/or our way of being with and for people and the planet. Choose sustenance that is easy on your gut!
Smooth finish.
The digestive system utilizes the nutrients from the food we eat and eliminates the food waste in the form of liquid, solid and gas. Although this is a topic of amusement for many, it remains a source of discomfort and pain to those with less than ideal eating habits. A Righteously Delicious diet attends to the discharge process so that the sensory output from the bladder and bowels are pleasant (subjectively speaking) to all eight senses, and in particular, the olfactory and interoceptive sensory systems. We acknowledge our bodies for knowing how to utilize the food we take in and convert it into energy, reserves and waste.
The recipes that I share on this website will result in a smooth finish. This is because the ingredients of Righteously Delicious recipes are packed with fiber and nutrients. The body can efficiently process, utilize, store and eliminate useful food. I can see this when I do the dishes after a Righteously Delicious (or "Forks over Knives") meal. The Righteously Delicious food cleanly separates from the pots and pans in which it was cooked and stored, and from the plates and cutlery on which it was served and eaten. Less soap and hot water are required. I imagine that the same cleansing effect takes place when our body is done with the Righteously Delicious food that passes through our bodies.
Gratitude and goodness for the planet and its denizens.
Let me count the ways that eating a whole foods plant based diet is beneficial. People and animals get to live longer and better lives. The ecosystem is balanced so the earth easily recycles fresh air, provides clean water and nutrient rich soil to grow crops. As a result, there is more health, flourishing, pleasure and joy. We become bright eyed in our determination for moderation, generosity and modesty in our food choices. We are creative in utilizing our myriad healthy food resources. We give ourselves gifts when we appreciate our good feelings that come from eating well. We empower ourselves with food knowledge and access. We practice preemptive health management when preventing food-related illness and reversing negative effects of previously made poor food choices. We happily accept that we reap what we sow and plant good crops, literally and metaphorically. We role-model loving kindness with our intentional dining decisions. We promote and attend to time management and minimization of waste in our attachments to food, our bodies and the inhabitants of the world around us. We direct our aging process with our food choices. The fruitful people multiply. Good food deeds beget good food deeds.