Comfort in Crisis: Over 100 Easy Plant-Based Recipes

By Ken Knight

What does one do in lockdown during the modern world’s worst global pandemic? With limited shopping trips and ingredients available, but a burning desire to eat healthier, Ken Knight took to the kitchen and keyboard to create, test and document over 100 easy-to-follow plant-based recipes. The meat-free (fish allowed), gluten-free, dairy-free (butter allowed, are you crazy?) and sugar-free creations inside go from appetizers to desserts to leave both your mind and palate completely satisfied.

In this volume, Knight continues to weave in common-sense cooking and life tips, just as in his first book, Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty. Prior to the pandemic, the author also penned a personal account of a life filled with fear and anxiety in Thru The Blue and Happy Too with useful tips then – and even more so now – on how to overcome and carry on with a happy life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035847907

Ken Knight

Ken Knight has been happily writing since his school desk was pushed across the hall from Grade 3 to 4 and as part of various careers and hobbies since then. Once a life-long resident of Calgary, Knight retired to Canada’s fabulous St. Andrews by-the-Sea and still enjoys writing more than any other thing. He found solace in cooking and the written word during the global pandemic, creating this healthy-eating cookbook for all to enjoy.

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Ken Knight has been happily writing since his school desk was pushed across the hall from Grade 3 to 4 and as part of various careers and hobbies since then. Once a life-long resident of Calgary, Knight retired to Canada’s fabulous St. Andrews by-the-Sea and still enjoys writing more than any other thing. He found solace in cooking and the written word during the global pandemic, creating this healthy-eating cookbook for all to enjoy.

Copyright © Ken Knight 2024

The right of Ken Knight to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035847891 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035847907 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

For Les, my loving partner in this delicious life. Thank you for dreaming with me and eating every version of these recipes until they were perfect!

To all who struggled and lost during the pandemic, but made it to the other side with a desire to live life more fully, including eating and sharing delicious food at home.

Table of Contents

In the Beginning

Stocking Your Pantry and Fridge

Essential Equipment

Methodology

Breakfast

Basics

Salads and Dressings

Soups

Breads

Appetisers

Dips, Sauces and Condiments

Mains

Sides

Cookies and Treats

Desserts

In the Beginning

I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

~ Anne Frank

There will be very few people alive in the world today who do not remember the early days of the year 2020. As a new virus swept over the world claiming lives and destroying businesses and economies, many of us sheltered at home and tried our best to avoid becoming sick and overwhelming the healthcare system.

Even as I write these words, I still cannot really believe what happened and the lasting effect it will have. And since many history books have and will be written about the virus and how the world reacted, I won’t bore you with my account. I do however add a few points of reference and some words of wisdom to give you a peek into my world as I wrote and tested the recipes.

I found it very interesting we received at our home two different—and likely very expensive—pamphlets from our provincial and federal governments telling us what to do during the crisis. There were lots of basic things about social distancing and hand washing, but not a single mention about what to put in our mouths to be healthy and have better immune function. This might explain the empty junk food aisles at the grocery store!

Stepping back just a few weeks before it all began, my husband Les and I had started making changes to the way we ate. So as the world—and I—isolated inside our homes, I was faced with some time on my hands and a very new cooking landscape to navigate.

After cooking and choosing really delicious food for a long time, I didn’t want to suddenly sit down to a cold green salad every night. I wanted to find comfort in the dishes I put together, both in the effort creating them and the time enjoying them. Food is definitely the way many people find comfort in crisis. It worked for me.

I’m not a trained chef, nor do I have any formal culinary training. But don’t run away! My on-the-job training in the kitchen later in life has done me well. I have tried, failed and tried again on thousands of recipes and have come out the other side with some solid winners.

In fact, I can now read through a recipe and almost instinctively tell if it’s going to work out or not. I’ll admit, there’s often a that’s just stupid muttered in the process if I see something odd. And I’m sorry, but with thousands of recipes at the end of a quick web search, I can honestly say there is a lot of stupid out there. Who wants to waste their time and valuable ingredients (really valuable right now) on something that isn’t going to work out or taste good?

As a child, I came from a family home where my mum cooked every meal with love and always with the best she could do from a limited budget. Married at an early age, my wife at the time was a trained home economics teacher and grew up doing a lot of cooking with her own family due to their work schedules. So after all that, there I was at 42 years old with very few cooking skills except the stereotypical dad is barbecuing abilities.

Enter a brief stint as a bachelor—and a lot of restaurant and instant food—and then sharing a home with my new partner, who later became my husband. Even he had significantly more cooking skills than me. Something had to change! Fifteen years later, I have gained a lot of confidence in the kitchen and I am itching to share.

Les and I have been through many phases in our eating journey. Our travels have allowed us to try the food of many different cultures and, along the way, discover the standard North American diet is a recipe for disaster.

One day on vacation in the swimming pool in Arizona, we both could not even finish a cold beer. We were so bloated and Les had been getting unexplainable sores in his mouth. After returning home to Canada and visiting our naturopathic doctor, she feared some gluten and dairy intolerances and suggested a Paleo diet for us on a trial basis. We have never looked back.

We have made many diversions and dramatic falls off the wagon since then, but it has changed the way we eat forever. But perhaps the biggest transformation for us took place this past year. February 14 to be exact.

After a decadent and absolutely scrumptious Valentine’s dinner at our friends’ house, we started watching a free 10-day online series about curing cancer with healthy eating. To be clear, we didn’t and don’t have cancer—and Les reminded me of this almost every time we sat down to watch! But the series absolutely resonated with us after losing so many family members and friends to cancer. The series spent a lot of time talking about prevention too and, really, just a smarter way to live and eat. Eat and live?

Our motives for this new way of living blossomed into many as we did more and more research and retraced our families’ histories. More than our fair share of cancer, heart disease and obesity have caused sickness, suffering and death. Red and processed meat always seems to show up as the villain in these stories.

We even recalled a food tour we had done in Greece a few years ago and the message the knowledgeable guide relayed to the group. Most European cultures in history only had meat on special holidays and often less than a dozen times a year. Quite different than the standard North American diet and the way we had been raised to cook and eat.

There is now an overwhelming body of data that clearly advises the optimal diet for heart health, cancer prevention and a healthy body weight is one that is low in animal products, sugar and processed foods and high in vegetables and other whole plant foods.

Even if you are just trying to have a meatless Monday now and then or start to put a few more vegetables on your plate, I hope the recipes in this book will help you. We’re not aiming for rocket science here.

I can’t make any guarantees, obviously. For our little family, eating differently resulted in weight loss, more energy, better skin and elimination of over-the-counter pain medications. Basically, we look and feel better—except for our hair that has not been cut in three months!

What I can guarantee is not a single recipe in this book includes ingredients with meat, dairy (except a little butter), gluten and processed sugar. If I couldn’t create or modify a recipe to meet these criteria, it didn’t make it.

Enjoy your journey through these pages. A little wisdom, a little history and a whole lot of fun and easy recipes to give you comfort—in or out of crisis.

Stocking Your Pantry and Fridge

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

~ Maya Angelou

If you were planning to take up carpentry, you would not just head out to your workshop or garage and hope to start creating wonderful pieces of furniture without any wood or tools. Right?

So if you are trying to eat differently with no (or less), meat, dairy, wheat and sugar, it stands to reason you will have to first get some basic materials and some proper tools. And likely a few things you do not currently have on hand. Guess how much fun that was to do during isolation and hoarding at the grocery stores? So if I could do it, you can do it.

I am really not saying you have to spend a lot of money all at once. That just plays into the myth of eating healthy is SO expensive which I was guilty of saying myself and I still hear so often. I can honestly say our grocery bills have shrunken to almost half now that we have the basics in our pantry. Fresh fruits and vegetables fill your stomach faster than meat and processed foods—and contain a higher percentage of water and fibre. You feel full and eat and spend less!

If you don’t currently have some of the kitchen tools I use and recommend, these make great additions to a Christmas, birthday, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day wish list. Everyone will benefit from the delicious dishes you are going to churn out, so it doesn’t hurt to ask for a little help.

Organic

I do recommend seeking out and buying organic whenever possible and available. This too was something I used to think was a waste of money. But if your goal is to put healthy things in your mouth, the last thing you want to eat are things that have been grown or treated with pesticides and other chemicals to make them look pretty or last longer. Yuck!

There’s a little 12 and 12 list I learned a long time ago to separate the fruits and veggies that are most worth buying in organic form. Apples, celery, strawberries, peaches, spinach, nectarines, grapes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes, blueberries, lettuce and kale are worth it because they practically inhale pesticides. Onions, sweet corn, pineapple, avocados, asparagus, peas, mangoes, eggplant, cantaloupe, kiwi, cabbage and watermelons aren’t as prone to pesticide residues.

Local

The concept of buying local has been around for years, but before this crisis, was something most of us did only if convenient and to be cool. But as international borders were closed and we saw our friends’ and neighbours’ businesses struggle to survive, buying local took on a new meaning. Buying local meant supporting local and we changed our habits accordingly. Maybe we didn’t need fresh raspberries from South America in March. We even paid a little bit more if we knew it would stay in our community. Food for thought.

Onions and Garlic

Up until a few years ago, I could not eat onions. Every time I ate them, my throat would get very sore and feel like it was closing. Not nice! Doctors told me it may have been due to a chemical imbalance and, with the way I was eating, I’m really not surprised I was out of balance.

You will quickly notice in these pages that all that has changed. Onions and garlic are