Shanghai Bok Choy with Leek, Fennel, Jalapeño, and Mushroom

I don’t know that these recipes, which I just make up or adapt from recipes I’ve read, are really of interest, but I thought they might give readers some ideas and also show what a person following whole-food plant-only diet eats, since before I got into the diet I myself had no real idea (and for all I know, I’m the only one eating as I do).

This dish is one that I just made up — I bought some vegetables and cooked them, so really not much of a recipe — and my goal in part was to get additional different vegetables. I’m really taken by the idea that one should eat 30 different plant foods in the course of a week, and since I do eat a variety in the dishes I make, I like the challenge of eating 30 different plant foods every two days. The first two days I ate 32. Today ended the second pair of days, and I needed 6 new vegetables to finish with a total of 31. (When I reach 30 (or more), I reset the count and start anew the next day.) So when I went shopping, I deliberately picked vegetables to increase the count.

I used my Field Company No. 8 cast iron pan. Ingredients for the dish:

• 1-1.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• fronds from a bulb of fresh fennel — I needed to get rid of those before eating the bulb, so I chopped them up
• 1 long skinny leek, including green part chopped
* 2 small Shanghai bok choy — these were not baby bok choy, but roughly middle-school size — chopped
• 1 jalapeño, chopped
• 4 medium domestic white mushrooms, chopped
• freshly ground black pepper
• a couple of good dashes fish sauce — the store’s been out of Red Boat for a while, so I’m using what they have

I cooked the above over medium heat until the mushrooms released their liquid and the vegetables were tender.

I served a cup of that over 1/4 cup black beans and 1/4 cup kamut with a dash of Louisiana Hot Sauce. It tasted very good indeed, and I have enough left for another such meal.

Earlier I diced 2 medium turnips and simmered them for about 20-25 minutes until they were tender. I drained them in a sieve, returned them to the pot, and mashed them with the pulp blended from 1 peeled lemon (like this) and a dash of olive oil, with some ground black pepper. That was just a little treat: I like cooked turnips.

I also ate 1 Belgian endive as a kind of hand salad, breaking off leaves and eating them, as I watched TV.

All that added 6 vegetables that I had not counted earlier (mushrooms and lemon already counted in earlier meals); that, together with the 25 from yesterday, took me to a total of 31.