Miscellaneous Articles
Pantry Stocking for a Low Carb Plant-Based Diet
What starts out as a diet becomes a lifestyle
Like any cookbook, there are a few categories of items I recommend accumulating for your pantry, with ‘pantry’ broadly construed to include your fridge and freezer! Basically, you need to keep things around that won’t go bad too quickly in the same way as fresh produce, and you don’t really want to be running to the store constantly to buy stuff.
Some of the items below will need to be refrigerated after opening, so make clever use of spatial arrangements in your fridge when it comes to managing shelf and drawer space relative to container size — it can be very easy to accumulate quite a lot of ingredients when it comes to any kind of specialized or intentional diet such as a low carb vegan diet. When people say, “OMG, what can you eat?!” just open your fridge and pantry and say, “All this stuff!” And it’s a lot of stuff!
Flavor Enhancers
It’s a good idea to get to know all of the speciality ‘ethnic’ delis and groceries in your area, such as those with a focus on Italian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Asian (East and South), Latin American and general European foods and imports. These businesses will provide you with a richer variety of ingredients to add amazing flavors to your cooking. For example, from my local Italian food store, I keep the following in stock:
Capers (I prefer the smaller kind)
Dill and almond pesto (basil pesto is usually loaded with non-vegan cheese particles)
Various olive tapenades
Ajvar (a red pepper spread, the lowest carb version you can find)
Black truffle sauce
Hot sauces (ranging from small expensive bottles that are high on the Scoville scale to massive mild stuff made for the masses)
Various pitted olives (e.g. with pimentos or garlic stuffing, or with no stuffing)
Sun-dried tomatoes
A few blocks away from where I live, there’s a Middle Eastern grocer, where I get saffron for my paella, phyllo dough for my pizzas, raw honeycomb and better prices and selection on non-Western typical spices.
I also live near Korean, Chinese and Eastern European delis (thank you, Canadian immigration policy!), and as with many cities, there are organic and sustainable supermarkets around.
Judicious use of these flavor enhancers will go a long way towards refining your meal prep and making them, well, very tasty! The thing to watch out for is to not pile them up into the same dish. Read the nutrition label carefully, as you should buy these flavor enhancers with ~1–3 net carbs (carbs — fiber = net carbs) per serving.
Try to get away with just using one or at most two in a dish, because the more you enhance your meals a lot of these flavors, the fat from the oils and carbs will add up as you load them in, so be strategic and minimalist in your cooking style.
Sweeteners
Keep stevia and monk fruit on hand, ideally both in packet form (for your cups of coffee and tea) and in larger bags more suitable for baking. These are natural non-calorie sweeteners and thus very handy.
Thickeners
Keep bags of guar gum and xanthan gum on hand as thickeners, experiment with both and see which you like best in various applications. A little goes a long way. I actually rarely use them, but sometimes they are just the right trick to make a liquid thick.
Frozen Stuff
Some good things to keep in the freezer are:
Many loaves of sliced low carb bread
Chopped avocados (for the Creamy Green Smoothie)
Kale (also for the Creamy Green Smoothie)
Broccoli florets
Cauliflower florets
Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries
Servings of recipes made in big batches
Prepared veggies
You can see how important the Cream Green Smoothie is to my diet! From this you should take that I drink it daily, because it’s a ‘super super’ food in that it has many ingredients that are each themselves considered to be super foods.
The lowest carb fruits are blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, so keeping these frozen berries on hand will be good if you ever get a sweet tooth craving that would otherwise send you to the gelato factory.
I also freeze some very choice fancy items like expensive mushrooms I sometimes come across in the weekly farmer’s market and similar items. For veggies that you won’t be eating regularly but also can’t come across conveniently, consider washing, slicing and freezing them for easy use in recipes.
Also, some dishes should be made in very large batches so you can freeze servings for easy access later.
Pickled Stuff
Pickled veggies take up a lot of space in the fridge once opened, so I usually buy them at least in pairs, where one jar goes in the fridge and the backup is in the pantry (an exception is kimchi, which is always chilled). My usual collection of jarred pickled veggies include:
Pickles
Mushrooms
Artichokes
Asparagus
Yellow squash
Pitted olives (various kinds)
Kimchi (the vegan variety, available at specialty Asian or organic grocers. Regrettably, mainstream kimchi includes shrimp and fish paste, and equally regrettably, store-bought vegan kimchi costs three or four times as much per volume as the non-vegan kind!).
Spicy Stuff
Online research into the spices with the most amount of scientific research into positive health effects will yield a long list such as:
Basil
Black pepper
Cardamom
Cayenne Pepper
Chili Powder
Clove
Coriander
Cumin
Curry
Dried red pepper
Fennel
Fenugreek
Licorice Root
Nutmeg
Oregano
Parsley
Peppermint
Rosemary
Saffron
Sage
Thyme
Turmeric
Of course, you need to have all of them! In the Super Spice recipe below, I do just that: I literally take all of these spices and make a blend out of them, and then add this summative ‘Super Spice’ to the dishes that call for them.
Additionally, cocoa and cinnamon both have health benefits, but these I make into a separate blend for the Smoothed Spiced Coffee.
Fresh Herbs
Most well-stocked grocers sell pre-packaged fresh herbs in the produce section. Keeping a small collection in your fridge of not-dried-out oregano, thyme, dill, mint, basil and other fresh herbs will always come in handy for making your dishes just explode with flavor, and I really mean that: Explode! Boom! With flavor!
Omega 3 and 6
Similarly, as I do with the Super Spice, I create a mix of chia seeds, ground flax and hemp hearts, which I store in the fridge as a key ingredient of the Creamy Green Smoothie.
Other Dry Goods
Other dry goods you’ll want to keep handy for the recipes in this book include:
Matcha powder
Psyllium husks (fine ground powder form)
A vegan protein powder supplement (for the Creamy Green Smoothie, flavored as you wish)
Spirulina (in its powder form, you can bake with it or blend it into the Creamy Green Smoothie, though it can get quite sticky when wet. You can also take this super food in pill supplement form).
Chickpea flour
Almond flour
Coffee and tea
Nutritional yeast
Baking soda
Baking powder
Black salt (kala namak) for eggy flavor
It’s not really a dry good, but some vanilla and other extracts always come in handy.
Convenient Faux Meat and Dairy
When time is of the essence (or when laziness is, that counts, too), it’s always handy to have some veggie burger patties (e.g. plant-based imitation meats or the bean and lentil type), or perhaps ground vegan chorizo and sausage links, along with a selection of some of the vegan cheeses (solid or shredded).
Read labels carefully, since typically vegan meats and cheeses are a bit high in either (or both!) carbs and fat, and vegan cheeses especially will be high in fat. These foods are best used for cheat meals or at least very non-regularly, if your goals are weight loss.
For weight maintenance, increase frequency of consumption accordingly, if your budget allows. In grad school, we used to call Whole Foods ‘Whole Paycheck,’ so just remember that these imitation animal products are often as pricey as, well, animal products, if not more so.
Nondairy milks are a different story, as they are not too expensive (relative to dairy milk) and can be found in unsweetened varieties with negligible fat and carbs while also being heavily fortified with nutritional value.
Bulk Boxed Unsweetened Almond or Soy Milk
For daily low carb vegan dairy style drinking (e.g. coffee and smoothies), the usual best choices are unsweetened (vanilla or plain) almond milk or soy milk, depending on your taste preferences.
The kind I use has 1 net gram of carbs per serving, so read the labels and aim for something like that in the brands you choose. Cashew milk tastes (to me) a lot better than almond milk, but the label says it has an additional net gram or so of fat and carbs, so I use it more in dishes and less in drinks.
For practical storing vegan dairy, I recommend unsweetened (plain or vanilla) almond or soy milk that can be stored unrefrigerated until opening, since this staple item can take up lots of room if you buy the kind that needs to be refrigerated from the time of purchase.
The Creamy Green Smoothie recipe calls for one liter each time it is made, which yields five large glasses that can be stored in the fridge and consumed over a couple days (or in one very hungry day!). I buy the almond milk in bulk boxes of six, and they sit piled up in my garage, next to the bikes.
Flavored Oils and Vinegars
An oil or vinegar is ‘infused’ if the extra flavors are added afterwards, and ‘fused’ when produced at the same time. In other words, if you press oranges and olives in one mash to get the oil, you have orange-fused extra virgin olive oil, but if you add chipotle chili oil to your olive oil after both are made, then you have a chipotle-infused oil.
I will just refer to “flavored” oils and vinegars and not worry about whether you obtain fused or infused varieties. For the purposes of your low carb vegan pantry, it’s a great idea to get a number of both flavored (white and dark) vinegars and olive oils, because like fresh herbs, they help your dishes explode with flavor, and I mean, explode!
Konjac
A number of recipes make use of konjac products, which are easy to find in locales that have large Asian supermarkets. If you don’t live in such an area, you can also buy these on Amazon or through other online retail sources. Konjac is very low in calories and makes a great substitute for rice, pasta and even cubed potatoes.
In the recipes I make use of three kinds of konjac: the noodle form — called shirataki — for pastas, a riced form (so amazing for the paella :) and a solid gelatinous slab (for cubes and slices). Either brown or white konjac varieties will work for the recipes. When store-bought, it is usually chilled and so should be stored in your fridge. If buying online, you can keep it in your pantry until opened (follow the instructions on the package).
A few sources recommend blanching the slab form of konjac prior to using it for cooking, since some people object to its odor right out of the package. What you can do is simply cut a brick in half, and blanch one half of the slab by placing it in boiling water for a few minutes. Remove the blanched konjac slab, and then just do a side-by-side nose comparison against the unblanched slab. Do you think the improvement is worth the blanching step? That will be very subjective.
The blanched konjac certainly has less of a konjac smell, but konjac smell doesn’t bother me, so ‘to blanch or not to blanch’ can be treated as a personal preference (like so much cooking, come to think of it!). Blanching makes konjac a little less ‘quick and simple’ (the ethos of this book), but you are welcome to add more labor to your cooking if you wish!
For konjac rice, you can give it more of a rice-like texture by dry roasting it for 15 minutes or so, drying it out a bit, which again, is more work to do and so that’s considered to be an optional step.
Shirataki noodles just need a great sauce to go with.
TVP
TVP, or Textured Vegetable Protein, is your handy ground beef substitute. Use it in lasagna, stuffed peppers, Bolognese sauce, or for other ground beef dishes like sloppy joes sandwiches, stir fry for lettuce wrap filling, and so on.
It’s sold dehydrated, and adding boiling water and covering rehydrates it (follow the instructions on the package). If your sauce or surrounding ingredients are amazing, the TVP will taste amazing and you will quickly forget that it’s not ground beef.
Vegetable Broth
It’s worth getting into your weekly routine making batches of vegetable broth, because it’s very handy, especially when you make your own soups and seitan.
You can of course throw any veggies you want into a pot of simmering water, or buy bouillon cubes, or buy readymade veggie broth. Because I’m lazy and always seeking efficiencies, I keep my weekly vegetable broth batch down to a few ingredients (besides the water, of course):
a dozen slices of ginger root
1 large onion (white or yellow, whatever looks best in the store that day)
a dozen garlic cloves (peeled, of course)
Throw in some bay leaves if you are really aching to do that. When making the chowder, consider using a lot more vegetables than just these when making the stock, to get more flavor for that recipe.
I simmer this at medium low heat for ~30 minutes. You don’t want to overcook as the vegetables might start converting to a bitter taste.
An advantage of this limited ingredient set is that I can directly use the cooked garlic and onions in a new batch of coconut rice. This simple stock helps me come up with new efficient ways to be lazy in my cooking, or at least save time when making coconut rice!
If you plan to reuse the broth components in this way, make sure your ginger slices are very large so you can easily separate them from the garlic and onion pieces.
