Foods Long Life

A simple way to get more veggies into your family's diet! It's also a great gluten free side dish for the holidays. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Did you know the Instant Pot has a Rice Button? For the first year I owned my Instant Pot, I didn't use the Rice button a single time. I cooked just about everything using the Manual button. One day I thought I'd give that poor neglected button a try.  Here's a simple recipe for a rice side dish that provides the added benefit of dietary fiber, vitamin A, C, potassium and manganese as well as magnesium, vitamin E and B6. For the rice, I prefer Tamaki Haiga , the short grain white rice that retains the germ. I call it "white rice without the guilt." (Please note that the Rice button is only timed for white or parboiled rice.)                  *                           *       ...

Learning to cook vegetables in an Instant Pot can take patience. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . A Quick Status of the Fires In my last post , we were in the middle of the worst fires California has ever experienced. We are safe now and the fire danger is pretty much over. The air, once filled with ash and smoke, is clearing. And although we are now returning to our normal lives, there are thousands of people in the area whose homes burned to the ground. The community is rallying in many ways, as communities do when tragedies happen.  First responders have been elevated to gods here in Sonoma county. We ran into three fire fighters in a restaurant last night who finally got a chance to have a meal. We tried to pay for their meals but the waitress smiled and said that someone had beaten us to it. I would guess that wine country firefighters will never have to pay for another meal in their lives! So thanks for all of your concern, notes, and wel...

Butternut Squash Soup with extra protein and fiber. Follow us on Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . What to do with all my Butternut Squash You may have seen last week's post where I shared our magic dirt formula that contributed to us getting 60 butternut squash from a single seed! The obvious next thing to think about is what am I going to do with all this butternut squash? Part of my harvest. Today's recipe is a very simple soup that I make in my Instant Pot. Most of the time, I make a very light and brothy butternut squash soup - the kind you sip from a mug. But for a heartier meal, I like to thicken the soup with split peas. The split peas not only make the soup thicker, but they add a significant amount of protein and fiber. While the soup is fat free and very low in calories (less than 200 calories per bowl), it provides a healthy 10 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber.                       *   ...

Enjoy this Italian-style potato salad in minutes. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Working my way through our Potato Harvest In my quest to use the 50+ pounds of potatoes that we harvested, I whipped up this potato salad yesterday using my Instant Pot. This is an Italian-style potato salad that my dad used to make for me using lemon and oil instead of mayonnaise. It also uses parsley from my garden and fresh garlic that I harvested a while back. New potatoes only take a few minutes to cook in the Instant Pot and don't need peeling, just a good scrub. I only use 1 1/4 pounds of potatoes in this recipe because it's best when served warm and fresh.                         *                         *                         *  Lemony Instant Pot Potato Salad Vegan, gluten and ...

Simple Beets Salad with Balsamic and Scallions. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Beets - Delicious but Messy I love beets. When dining out, I almost always order a beet salad if it's on the menu. But I don't often make them at home because they are a mess to handle. But this morning with a single rubber glove, my Instant Pot and a butter knife I made this easy beet salad wearing a white blouse! I don't suggest the white blouse, but here's what I did. Instant Pot Beets I started with small to medium sized beets - about 2 inches in diameter. I rinsed them in a colander. Holding them by the tails, I cut the tops to remove what was left of the stem. I tossed them into my Instant Pot with an inch of water. I pressed the Manual button and set for 20 minutes. They take a surprisingly long time to cook. (You may want to start with 10 to 15 minutes and test them and if they aren't cooked, set them for another 5 or 10 minutes.) Do a quick release and te...

A good way to use your garden zucchini! Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . It's Zucchini Time There have been years when I've planted so many zucchini that I was ready to set the garden on fire.  This year I promised myself I would scale back and only planted a single zucchini. However, it's so prolific that I'm still having a hard time keeping up with it. So you may be seeing more zucchini recipes this summer. My one and only zucchini plant. Today's recipe also uses potatoes since we just harvested over 50 pounds of new potatoes a few days ago. They are so easy to grow and what's better than a freshly harvested new potato? Our potato harvest. Although I cook this in my Instant Pot, you can easily make this on the stovetop. I include notes on stovetop directions below.                         *                               ...

White beans with olives, artichokes, peppers, and avocado. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Easy to make in your Instant Pot It's easy to open a can of beans but it's not all that hard to make them from dried beans in your Instant Pot. Here's a simple recipe that's perfect for summer since it can be served warm, at room temperature, or even chilled. Bring to a pot luck, serve as an antipasto when entertaining company, or make it a meal on a bed of greens.  To Salt or Not to Salt A while back I read a post on Serious Eats about whether or not you should salt your beans when soaking and when cooking. You should read the entire article to appreciate the testing but their results were:   "For the best, creamiest, most flavorful beans, season your bean-soaking water with one tablespoon of kosher salt per quart (about 15 grams per liter), rinse the beans with fresh water before cooking, then add a pinch of salt to the cooking water as ...

These large, fluffy vegetarian matzo balls are  made  in an Instant Pot Electric Pressure Cooker . Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest .          With Passover approaching, here's an easy way to make matzo ball soup in your Instant Pot. One of the secrets of making great matzo balls is to never uncover the pot while they are cooking. Well, there's no chance of that happening while they are locked in a pressure cooker!  For this recipe, I'm using Manischewitz Matzo Meal, not a matzo ball mix. Matzo Ball Soup Vegetarian [makes 8 matzo balls/4 servings] Requirements Instant Pot Electric Pressure Cooker Ingredients For the Matzo Balls 1/2 cup Manischewitz Matzo Meal 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 2 teaspoons dried parsley 2 eggs from happy chickens 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons water For the Soup 8 cups water 2 stalks celery, small diced or thinly...

Use your Instant Pot for perfect breakfast potatoes. Make a healthier breakfast for your Valentine! Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Breakfast Potatoes I must have been Irish in another lifetime because I adore potatoes. Baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and especially fried breakfast potatoes. Fried breakfast potatoes, however, can take a lot of oil with added calories. They also take a long time to cook, and who has that kind of time in the morning? But the Instant Pot comes to the rescue to help with both of these problems.  So if your want to make your Valentine some healthy fried breakfast potatoes to go with a tofu scramble or his favorite egg dish, here's a quick recipe for the potatoes. You can always jazz this recipe up by frying some onions or peppers before you add the potatoes, but I like my potatoes as they are. To save even more time in the morning, you can make the Instant Pot potatoes the night before, refrigerate them, and fry...

Cooking veggies in an Instant Pot can be tricky. Follow Foods For Long Life on Facebook and Pinterest . Instant Pot and Veggies Once you have an Instant Pot Pressure Cooker, you almost forget you've got other pots and pans, even though it's sometimes just as easy to cook something in your normal repertoire of pots and pans.  One of the biggest challenges for me, with my Instant Pot, is cooking vegetables. If you get the timing wrong, your crisp veggies can easily turn to mush. So it's a matter of experimenting and getting to know your individual pot and each individual vegetable. I suggest you keep a little notebook and experiment with different dishes (this goes for grains and beans too). Once you've perfected the timing for each of your favorite vegetable, you can then attempt to cook several of them together. The easiest pairings are those foods that aren't that picky, like mushrooms. You can throw them in with anything and they will be just fine. But othe...