Granola Bars

Only 2 days through my now-infamous McDougall week, I caved. My stomach was demanding a mid-afternoon snack, and I got caught at work without access to suitable food. The next thing I knew my legs had carried me to the vending machine. I don't remember buying it, but somehow 85 cents ended up in the machine and a granola bar ended up in my hand. It was like magic, I swear. I was probably possessed.
I didn't actually feel bad about caving, but it was not something I wanted to repeat. Thus, it became critical to find an oil-free granola bar. I know that a l'arabar would have been acceptable, but they charge a buck sixty for those things, and they are pretty much mashed up dates. They are delicious and good in a pinch, but they are not what I would consider a granola bar.
A granola bar should have, well,  granola in it. However, granola is chock full of fat, so I had to go to the source: the oat. Oats are just as good as granola; they just haven't been toasted with a lot of oil and sugar. In a way, it's granola in it's natural habitat. I perused the McDougall forums and found a recipe that looked promising, except it was missing a very key ingredient: carob chips. I understand that I probably screwed up the entire "no-oil" guideline by the addition of these sweet little darlings, but they made my granola bars something like ten thousand times as delicious. Plus, even with a couple of carob chips, these were much better for me than anything that ever came out of a vending machine.

Breakfast Bran Muffins

One of the many diet books that I have consulted over the years was the Fat Smash Diet. Yes, that's right, it's written by Dr. Ian from VH1's Celebrity Fit Club. He actually has a degree from Harvard, so I felt comfortable listening to his advice. Unfortunately, that diet was hard to maintain and I came upon it before I really discovered willpower. However, the one thing that always stuck with me was how much Dr. Ian loathed muffins. He would have taken every muffin from every coffee shop and bakery in America, rounded them up, and marched them to their deaths. Why?
Because muffins are totally bad for you. Starbuck's Apple Bran muffin has 470 calories. It's a bran muffin! It's supposed to be healthy, or so one would think. Wash that sucker down with a frappuccino, and your breakfast has 800 calories in it. To give you some perspective, my caloric intake is somewhere around 1800 a day to maintain my weight. So, I could have that "healthy" muffin and some sugary syrupy goodness, but what would I do about the rest of my day?
Now, I wouldn't actually ever eat a Starbuck's bran muffin, because it has little baby animals in it, and I do not eat little baby animals. That whole rant was just a hypothetical exercise. Anyway, since regular muffins are so unhealthy, and since I decided to try out the McDougall plan for a week, here is a decent recipe for oil-free bran muffins. They're very dense and chewy, and it is my experience that one is more than enough for a filling breakfast.
Disclaimer: It's not the most delicious muffin ever, but If you are looking for non-fat recipes, than this is the way to go.

Oil-Free French Toast

Wow, or as the French would say, Oo-la-la. I am a girl who loves sweet foods for breakfast. However, when I think of French Toast I can't help but feel a little guilty thinking about all of the fat involved in cooking. Veganism took care of eliminating the cholesterol, Dr. McDougall took care of eliminating the fat. I, however, will take credit for my brilliant elimination of processed syrup by replacing it with a date compote.
Last month, I made my first-ever trip to Farmer's Choice, a brand new produce store on Pico in Santa Monica. It is in the same shopping center as the Trader Joe's and it is absolutely amazing. The produce looks, feels, and tastes as fresh as a farmer's market, but it's also incredibly cheap. On my second visit, I managed to buy 90% of the weekly produce for 2 people, and it only ran me $17. From talking to the checkout girl, I learned that they get most of their produce shipped in daily and use local sources whenever possible.
I ran in there to pick up some raspberries, but ended up taking a "quick look" around. My quick look turned into an excuse to fill my basket with fresh fruits and vegetables, including some of the sweetest, softest dates I've had in a long time. I previously have sworn by the date lady at the Virginia Avenue Park farmer's market. However, I am switching my allegiance over to Farmer's Choice.

Tex-Mex Breakfast!

OK, so I probably talked a lot of shit about tex-mex breakfast when I found the recipe on the McDougall website. I probably continued to poke fun at it as I reworked the recipe. I continued to be a smart-ass even as we sat down and ate tex-mex breakfast. However, I was eating my words once I realized 1: it's delicious and 2: it's really, really good for you.
I made this breakfast a few weeks ago and substituted tofu for the brown rice recommended by the officiall McDougall recipe. Some members of my household can't really get behind the entire "rice for breakfast" idea.
On the day I took the picture, I may have undermined the entire "oil-free" concept by adding some crumbled vegan sausage. The reason behind the addition was pretty straightforward. I had the vegan sausage patties on hand from before I went on my McDougall bender, and didn't want to let it go to waste. I'm big on not letting things go to waste.

Oil-free Chocolate Pie

Going into the Great McDougall experiment, I knew that I had to be prepared with some serious dessert. Despite trying to give it up many times, I have come to the very simple conclusion that dessert is what makes dinner worth eating. It's something to look forward to at the end of a long day (that and an over-sized glass of red wine). Luckily, I found a great recipe on the McDougall forums and tweaked it to better suit my tastes and aversion to sugar.
 As you can see in the picture, I artfully arranged sliced kiwi and cherries on top of the pie. If I were Oprah, cherries would be on my list of favorite things. The pigment in cherries may reduce swelling and inflammation, plus they look really cute on rockabilly dresses and accessories. In all seriousness, I don't think I had ever eaten a non-maraschino cherry until a few weeks ago. I don't know how I went 25 years without them. I also don't know what I'm going to do when all of these fruits and vegetables stop being new to me. Maybe I'll have to start shopping the produce aisles of ethnic grocery stores?

Doctor, Doctor

I am currently on my third day of the McDougall program. It’s a 12-day program focusing on starches, with fruits and vegetables playing important supporting roles. There are no meat or dairy products on the McDougall plan, so it’s very similar to veganism. However, the McDougall plan challenges us to make one major change in our lives: eliminating all oil.

Why do we hate on oil? Well for starters oil is fat. Pure fat. Your body loves to store fat. Personally, my body prefers my abdominal region, but maybe your body favors the derrier or thighs. Maybe you just have a fat face. We are all different in this regard. According to Dr. McDougall, fat deprives cells of oxygen and produces free radicals. Basically fat is causing damage to your body.

You may not buy into this, so let me spell it out very rationally. There are 120 calories in a tablespoon of oil. For 120 calories you could instead be eating:  17 cups of spinach, a small baked potato, over a cup of cornflakes, or 21 extra large strawberries. Out of these things, what is going to keep you full longer? What is going to be nutritionally dense enough to get your body the nutrition it needs? What is going to keep you from over-eating?

I’m 3 days into the plan, and I have been amazed at how full I have felt. I feel like I’ve been gorging myself on whole wheat pasta, vegetables, beans, whole grains, and fruit. The amazing thing is that I am losing weight again, and I have been on a pretty solid plateau for over a month. I’m still 9 pounds away from my ultimate goal, and I’m planning on McDougalling my way there.

The McDougall website has a lot of recipes on it, which I appreciate. My only gripe is that most of the recipes in the meal plan are pretty awful. It’s not that you can’t have delicious oil-free food, because you can. The cooking techniques, spices, and ingredient measures have been pretty off. Luckily, I’ve been able to catch most of them before or during cooking. Others I have had to suffer through. Check back often to see some of the things I’ve managed to come up with.