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Showing posts from October, 2019

Cabbage Noodle Bowls with Fried Eggs

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Noodle bowls are one of those meals I’ll make time and again for myself. I almost always have some variety of noodles in my pantry and the vegetables can be almost anything you have available. Cabbage! One of the things I like about using cabbage is that I inevitably can’t resist at the market but then find myself wondering how I’ll use it all. While I primarily use it raw, I love it charred either from the broiler or the grill. Add to that a few crispy scallions- it’s just delicious. Finally, this might seem like a lot of dishes for a small amount of meal. Yes, it is but things can run together. You can make the pickles and let them rest while you make everything else. Occasionally I won’t even mix the sauce- I’ll just add everything to a bowl and toss well. Dietary Swaps Luckily this recipe is fairly easy. To make this cabbage noodle bowl vegan, swap out the honey for your favorite vegan-friendly sweetener and use tofu/tempeh in place of the egg. For gluten-free, use gluten-fre

Phantom acupuncture for back pain

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Stimulated by Lee et al 2019 & Wei et al 2019.[1,2] Photo by Brad Lloyd on Unsplash . Back pain was a regular topic on this blog at its inception in March 2016 – around the time that the draft of NG59 was published. NG59 is the current NICE guideline for back pain and sciatica, although it seems somewhat out of step with other guidelines in the Western world,[3] and one of the key interventions recommended has been shown to be entirely ineffective in practice.[4] I have found myself remarking ironically in lectures since that “…of course acupuncture doesn’t work for back pain!” The data on acupuncture efficacy in NG59 had errors in both draft and final versions, but in spite of this it still exceeded many of the subsequently recommended interventions. See the discussion in previous NICE blogs . The papers I am focussing on here represent two very different approaches in back pain research that have been published this month. The relation between them is simply the back pai

Best Oatmeal Recipe (Vegan & GF)

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Here’s the very best oatmeal recipe that we make every day, vegan and plant based with tasty peanut butter and jelly toppings! What do you really eat? People ask us that a lot. Well, Alex and I have eaten every single recipe on this website! (And many more that don’t make the cut.) But today we wanted to share something we eat on a regular basis. I actually make this recipe every single day. And that is not hyperbole, friends! I really do. Why? This best oatmeal recipe tastes incredible. It’s vegan so it’s a plant based way to start the day. AND it is full of plant based protein so it is seriously filling: you’re literally full for hours after you eat it. What makes this the best oatmeal? I know, oatmeal sounds deceptively easy to make. But it can come out too gummy, too bland, or take way to long. What’s the best way to make it at home? This is my soulmate oatmeal, the recipe I have memorized and could make in my sleep. Here are the features of this best vegan oatmeal. Perfe

Little Sprouts, an e-cookbook

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We wrote an e-Book ! Writing that makes me feel very modern, even though I’m still not sure we’re doing this right. I feel like maybe I should have taken a course on this or something? View Little Sprouts in the shop I enjoy cooking and I really like eating, but we have two kids with opinions… about everything, actually. Feeding them can be tricky. I think there is a lot of angst from parents around their kids and food, and I want to take up space in that conversation.   “Are they eating enough?” “Ok, but are they eating enough vegetables?” “I am embarrassed by how often they eat pizza or mac n cheese.” This e-book gives a handful of ideas to add vegetables into foods that you find they already like, hopefully making meal time less of a strain on you or them. I wrote two cookbooks before we had children and my cooking has evolved so much since then. Evolved because of them and because of myself, but this piece feels like I am handing a collection of favorite recipes to a friend

Apple Muffins with Streusel

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Ready for the BEST healthy apple muffins? The streusel topping adds a sweet crunch to each bite, and use both applesauce and diced apple. To die for! Alex, Larson and I came home with a huge bag of apples the other day, after an afternoon of sipping apple cider slushies and frolicking in the local orchard. What to do with them? Once we’d made apple crumble and applesauce and apple pie, we paused for a breather. How about…apple muffins? Fortunately, these turned out incredible . The streusel topping adds a sweet crunch to each bite: and they’ve got a healthy spin too. Our son Larson literally gobbles these up! Here’s how to make them. Why to make these apple muffins? The streusel. These apple muffins are really a riff on our healthy pumpkin muffins recipe. That recipe had the original streusel topping, a crunchy topping made of glittery turbinado sugar and a little butter and oats. The nice thing about a streusel topping is that it adds just the right sweetness to each bite, in

Easy Creamy Gnocchi Sauce

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This creamy gnocchi sauce is done in minutes! Pecorino cheese, butter and pepper make the tastiest weeknight dinner: Italian comfort food at its finest. Dinner in 15 minutes? Oh yes. Alex and I have a new trick we’ve been dying to share with you: our Creamy Gnocchi Sauce! It takes just minutes to make the sauce, and the gnocchi boil up in 3 minutes. The flavor? It tastes like the fanciest ever mac and cheese: but takes literally no effort at all. We modeled it after one of our favorite Italian recipes , Cacio e Pepe pasta (literally “cheese and pepper pasta” in Italian). Our version uses gnocchi pasta and it’s simply to die for. Alex and I curled up with bowls of this comfort food on the couch on a rainy evening and it was pretty much perfection! Secrets to the fastest gnocchi sauce So, back to that Cacio e Pepe . Alex and I had this famous simple pasta dish in Rome and fell in love. It’s a sauce made with Pecorino Romano cheese, a hard cheese that’s like Parmesan on steroids. I