question RE: peanut dressing

[jennysellars]

hi i'm new here and was wondering if i'll still lose weight if i have Mary's peanut dressing with baked yam for dinner.

this is the actual recipe in Mary McDougall's own words:

This is a favorite dish at The McDougall 10-Day Live-In Program and I always get requests for the recipe. It is simple to prepare and keeps well in the refrigerator for reheating later.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Servings: variable

Garnet Yams (reddish skins and a deep orange flesh)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Scrub the yams and cut into large pieces (quarter the yams unless they are very large).

Place in a single layer in a dry baking dish, skin side down. Cover with parchment paper, then cover the baking dish with aluminum foil, crimping it over the sides to hold in the steam. Bake for 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Hint: These are delicious with the Peanut Dressing.


i am doing A LOT of exercise which includes mixed martial arts class every night.

the thing is, this peanut dressing is the first recipe i've tried that i actually am willing to eat baked sweet potatoes/ yams with. nothing else tastes good and i hate yams otherwise. thanks for any input

[jennysellars]

Peanut Dressing

Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Servings: makes 2 cups

¾ cup rice vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons Sambal chili paste
¾ cup natural peanut butter
¼ cup warm water
1/8 cup cilantro leaves

Place vinegar, soy sauce and chili paste into a blender jar. Process on low until mixed. Add the peanut butter ¼ cup at a time and process until very smooth. Add the warm water and the cilantro leaves and process until well mixed.

Serve over lettuce, sweet potatoes, vegetables or whatever sounds good to you.

[Letha..]

If you look at page 60 of Dr. McDougall’s Maximum Weight Loss book, you’ll find he recommends that we:

Eliminate All High Fat Plant Foods: Nuts, Nut Butters, Seeds, Seed Butters, Avocados, Coconut, & Olives.

That is not to say that you can’t use the peanut sauce recipe . Lots of folks lose weight following the regular plan. Usually, younger people, very active people, and men have an easier timer losing weight. Older, more sedentary women like me, have a harder time.

If you are able to lose weight on the regular plan then it would be way easier to follow the regular plan then the MWL plan. But you can also go back and forth, doing the MWL plan on weekdays and the regular plan on weekends for example.

It really depends on you. The more recommendations that you can implement from the MWL book, the better your weight loss results will be. I continue to try and include more green and yellow veggies, more raw food, and to exercise more, which are all recommendations from the MWL book. Best wishes.
Letha

[LauraA]

The peanut dressing was something that I was still using when I first started doing the MWL group. I knew that it wasn't MWL, but I had lots of kids/grandkids here last year all through Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they all love that dressing. I actually was probably losing faster while I was having it than I am now, but I also had more to lose. I don't eat it now, or rice cakes - I'm being much stricter. My reasons are not weight loss - just that having that dressing makes it harder for me to resist hands full of nuts! Take care, LauraA

[bunsofaluminum]

Peanut Dressing

Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Servings: makes 2 cups

¾ cup rice vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons Sambal chili paste
¾ cup natural peanut butter
¼ cup warm water
1/8 cup cilantro leaves

Place vinegar, soy sauce and chili paste into a blender jar. Process on low until mixed. Add the peanut butter ¼ cup at a time and process until very smooth. Add the warm water and the cilantro leaves and process until well mixed.

Serve over lettuce, sweet potatoes, vegetables or whatever sounds good to you.

Oh, man I bet that dressing is SO good. I used to make ramen noodles with a made-up Thai dressing that was just like that: soy, vinegar, peanut butter, a little bit of sugar, and a little bit of red chili...no cilantro...dang.

Try it. If you use it and your weight loss slows down, it could be that the peanut butter has too much fat. I plan on treating nuts, nut butters, and avocado as "feast foods" (I won't eat meat or dairy ever again, no matter the occasion) and staying with simple, filling and starchy for my every day fare.

Is there a reason why you have to have the yams?

blessings, Heidi

[slugmom]

I make a peanut sauce that isn't quite as rich ...

mine is

~2 T. reduced sodium soy sauce
~2 T. honey
~2 T. red wine or cooking sherry (opt)
~1/2 c. water
1 T. peanut butter
garlic powder to taste
red pepper flakes to taste
~1 T. cornstarch to thicken

(needs to be cooked to thicken)

makes 2/3 - 3/4 of a cup

if you wanted the flavor more like the one listed, substitute rice vinegar for the honey, and use chili paste instead of red pepper flakes (to taste) and add cilantro ... maybe reduce the soy sauce

basically mine has less pb, more water, and is thickened with corn starch. And it makes a smaller quantity ... but proportionally has quite a bit less peanut butter in it. It's still a higher fat treat, MWL-wise, but for me, anyway, I find that the peanut butter adds that rich taste that I long for, but still isn't TOO bad for me, if it encourages me eat a giant heap of broccoli ... not that I don't like broccoli, just that I'm more likely to really enjoy eating veggies if I occasionally have a *treat* sauce on them.

Another option to look into is the PB2 product, which is essentially defatted peanut solids. You add 1 T. water to 2 T. of the PB2 stuff and it makes a much lower fat peanut butter spread ... that's all that's really in it. It doesn't taste JUST like peanut butter, to me, but it's just missing the peanut oil. Oh, I guess it does have a little sugar and salt added, but I think I read they were going to come out with one that didn't ... it does add some "peanutbutteriness" to sauces ...

here's a link if you're interested.

http://www.bellplantation.com/index.php ... &Itemid=35

[Mrs. Doodlepunk]

Jenny, if you can use a little of that dressing a couple of times a week and it doesn't make you crave more nuts and peanut butter, than I say try it and see.

If I were to eat some of that dressing, I would not stop until it was all gone! I would have sweet potatoes every day, for every meal, and use all the dressing in one day, I'm sure. I'm just like that. It is the reason that I've been doing this program for well over 5 years and am not at my goal weight.


Mary has many recipes that are too high in fat to have them very often. Most recipes with tofu and soy milk and nuts and nut butters I consider feast foods and save them for birthday parties, holidays and other special occasions. I try not to have special occasions every week, either!

Dr. McDougall even chides Mary on the new DVD set about the high fat foods she is using, and she says that it's to entice people new to the program into liking this way of eating. Well, whatever works. But clearly you could gain weight eating this way if you ate lots of the high fat dishes that are in the newsletters.

But, like I said, if a little of this dressing over a sweet potato gets you to eat it, then possibly it is OK for YOU to eat it. It would not work at all for me because I can not, for the life of me, practice moderation when it comes to food.