Gerd-friendly breakfast burritos

 If you're a regular reader around here you know I live for breakfast burritos. Problem is I've suffered from GERD for years now and spicy foods can cause flareups. So can some ingredients, like my beloved onions, and cooking methods like frying and sauteing.  I went through a phase of frying potatoes and onions on a cast-iron grill pan for the browning. Every burrito gave me indigestion and I questioned every ingredient but the potatoes. It's the oil, and the oils that are transformed by the heat. Recently I've gotten good results when I follow a low-fat, high-carb diet, vegan except for eggs. No meat, no dairy, no processed oils. Lots of vegetables, mushrooms, and grains. So here's a breakfast burrito that is tasty and filling and works to calm your inner fire too.

Ingredients

--Potatoes. Figure one small potato for each burrito, one medium potato for two, one large potato for three.

--whole grain tortillas

--one pound of dry beans

--one onion, skin removed

--two cloves garlic, skin removed

--four bay leaves

--1/2 green bell pepper, diced 

--1/2 cup corn kernels

--teaspoon each of thyme, cumin and paprika

--one bunch cilantro

Method

Required equipment: large pot with lid, stovetop grill pan

The night before, soak the beans in water. Rinse in the morning. Add fresh water so it is at least 3 inches above the beans.

Cook the beans on low with the bay leaves, half the onion (whole. Store the other half, or finely dice for burritos if fresh onion doesn't bother you), and the two cloves of garlic. About an hour in, add half the bunch of cilantro, whole. Cut up the other half and reserve.

When beans are soft, add the spices. Let it sit in the pot to absorb the flavor, about an hour.

At this time bake some medium russet or gold potatoes if you choose to bake them.

Remove the bay leaves and cilantro stems from the beans. Let the potatoes cool.

Cut a baked potato into cubes, or microwave a whole medium potato for 3-4 minutes until tender, then cut it into cubes when it's cool enough to handle.

On the grill pan, let the green pepper cook a few minutes. Add the corn kernels, salt and pepper to taste, then set aside.

Dry grill tortillas until starting to brown. Warm the tortillas before serving if necessary. 

To a warm tortilla, add any cheese you like, I use a commercial vegan shredded cheese usually.

Add some potato, drained beans. Sprinkle on reserved cilantro.

That's basically it. You can add a sauce, if you can tolerate it. If not, a spice mix of smoked paprika, crushed thyme and oregano, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper is nice. you can toast that on the stovetop grill for a couple of seconds after the tortillas are finished. 

I avoid onion and garlic powder as those give me problems whereas onions and garlic stewed low and slow, as we did above with the beans, don't.

Fold the ends in and then tuck the filling into the middle as you roll the closer end away from you. If using a fresh tortilla, take it oout of the pan before it is browned, tuck the sides in like forming a pocket and finish on the hot grill until it browns lightly.

Hope you enjoy!

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30 Days of Vegan: Breakfast Burritos

Is there a more perfect food than a burrito? Right off the bat, it has portability going for it- something I apreciate it because I rarely want to sit down for a meal. Just how I'm wired I guess. The burrito is like a Rhumba: it has key ingredients and signature moves that define the category, but beyond that, the sky is the limit. It can be made up of almost anything. It varies from the Guisado, basically in a stew in a tortilla- to the Mission, with its massive girth and plentiful rice and beans; to the Chimichanga, essentially a fried burrito; to Korean versions. And what is Moo Shu, if not a stir-fry burrito with paper-thin pancakes and plum sauce? The breakfast burrito is yet another variation, and can consist of whatever you like for breakfast wrapped in a tortilla. 

I tend to be pretty trad about mine: they are usually a combination of beans and avocado, sometimes with cheese, sometimes with potato or rice, slathered in taco sauce or salsa. But I've been known to take last night's curry, wrap it in a tortilla and call it breakfast. My choice of bean is usually black, but I go for pintos and red beans too. Avo is pretty much a requirement. Stacey's organic are the best vegan premade tortillas on the market. Violife makes an excellent shredded cheddar-like product that is my current choice for breakfast burritos. I recommend pico de gallo or corn relish as additions, and taco sauce or homemade salsa as condiments. But honesty, like its cousin the sandwich, almost anything is possible.

In terms of preparation, I don't have fixed directions for that, though I follow general guidelines. Generally I like to get all of the ingredients that should be warm heated up before wrapping, Further cooking is for the benefit of the tortilla or to melt any cheese. I prefer avocado to be sliced thinly and plain as opposed to chunked or made into quacamole- makes for a more consistent flavor and it's easier to layer with other stuff. 

If you lightly oil and salt the tortilla and cook them on cast iron, they take on a delicious, crispy character. You can also stovetop grill them for some retention of tenderness with flavorful sear lines and good inside warming. If you make your own tortillas or find raw tortillas at the store, you simply must try baking them in the oven for an incredible taste experience. Heck, even using the microwave works. I'd suggest lightly wetting the tortilla, wrapping it in a towel and 'waving the tortilla for ten seconds, then filling and building, rewrapping and giving it another 20-40 seconds depending on size.  

I gravitate toward the grilling method and a "soft taco"-sized tortilla that yields a burrito about  2" in diameter and 6-7" in length. Anymore is too much for me in the morning. But you probably like something else! And that's the great thing about burritos.Wrap one up in parchment paper and take it on your next morning journey.

... MOSTLY Vegan...

You know the joke from the Princess Bride. As Miracle Max examines a seemingly deceased Wesley, this transpires:

Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

That sums up my vegan experiment pretty well. No matter how hard I try, I find a part of me that is only mostly vegan. It is not an easy thing to be 100% vegan without a complete readjustment in your senses. Cheese is something I really needed to kick- I've had serious problems with overindulgence. I talked about my difficulty in abandoning it entirely here. After about two weeks of mostly veganism, I can say my cheese habit is nearly dead. I don't crave it anymore. Well, I do crave the slight tang that a good aged parmagiano reggiano imparts to pasta dishes. I don't think I will ever be able to kick that. But all of the other cravings are seemingly gone. I can't afford to lose that momentum.

One of the factors that killed my cheese desire was, ironically, the nasty flavor of most fake cheeses. I struggled in vain to get into Teese and Daiya. I still can't stand them. They taste so obviously artificial; it never blends in with the other flavors. (Although I do kinda like daiya browned in the pan and eaten on its own as a cracker of sorts.) So, in response to this, I have adjusted recipes so they really don't require cheese. And that is how I kicked the habit.

I do have to give a special shout out to Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese, though. It may not be better than cream cheese, but it is remarkably tasty. I use small amounts of it to give pasta dishes just enough creaminess.

Another factor has crept into our meal planning: the high cost of vegan replacements for non-vegan products. (that's the "checking the pockets for loose change" part of the analogy.) We really can only afford to have one or two of them around all of the time. The one dairy replacement that is not expensive at all is nutritional yeast, which is pretty darn cheap if you can get it in bulk. So we keep some meat replacers- mostly Morningstar and Quorn- around, and the Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, and the nutritional yeast. fake cheese we'll get periodically (Abbey finds the taste of Daiya just fine, thank you very much) but I don't think it will make a constant appearance.

Also, tofu, as versatile and genuinely tasty as it is, is a little hard on the budget if you want to use it many times throughout the week. Especially if you buy organic, which I usually try to do. So, for a cheap source of protein, I've decided to morph into what you might call an ovo-vegetarian and eat eggs. For breakfast this morning we had burritos with black beans, salsa, Morningstar sausage, scrambled eggs and green onions. I put some diced green pepper in mine as well. I don't anticipate going overboard with eggs, but I think I will have some periodically to simplify the preparation of some dishes and, as I said, gain a few protein points.

Other dairy issues have been solved for the most part as well. I gave up my much beloved lattes for black coffee and the occasional soy latte, which I discovered is not gross. Soy milk is also great in smoothies and with cereal. Abbey prefers almond milk, which she likes for the same purposes. I can definitely say my desire for milk is gone.

Milk caused us health issues, anyway. After not eating any dairy for a couple of weeks and then having a pasta dish with milk in the sauce, Abbey had some familiar bad feelings in her gut that reminded her a lot of her problems with IBS. Could she have been lactose intolerant all that time? Maybe or maybe not, but it seems she definitely to be now. For me, my sinuses are bothered by milk, so that was an easy choice.

This morning we had a nice treat: a chocolate smoothie made from chocolate syrup, frozen chunks of banana, and soy milk. I added just a splash of vanilla and blended it until smooth. It tasted decadent.