warm arugula and roasted mushroom salad

...with tofu and brown rice. Oil-free, delicious dressing too.

When I’m not working on my own plant-based recipes and cookbooks, I help other authors, chefs and health care professionals write theirs. And on a recent project I was tasked with creating a multitude of salad recipes with some strict parameters.

When I first sat down to map out my plan, I thought uh oh, this is going to be tough — if not impossible. Well what do you know, my creativity kicked into high gear, and I came up with ideas and whole food combinations that I’ve never considered before. It was almost effortless. I was pleasantly surprised, and it reminded me that sometimes the thing that seems so limiting, at least at first, can be the key to unlocking our innovation.

“Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity”- Ben Orlin

I read and saved this quote a while back because it reminded me of the journey and transformation so many of us experience after we adopt a whole foods plant-based diet. Initially the obstacle — removing dairy, unhealthy convenience foods, meat, fried everything — seems crushing, but our process of finding a way over and around brings us to a place much better and more satisfying than we ever imagined. All because of creativity.

We need only to reference the innovation, resourcefulness, and shear genius in most plant-based cookbooks to be reminded of the wonderful things possible in this, often considered restrictive, lifestyle. You can make steak out of cauliflower and icing out of chickpeas! You can turn bananas into chocolate pudding and cashews into nacho cheese! It’s absolutely miraculous the things we’ve come up with.

Parameters and boundaries, they can be powerful.

Try It!

If you want to experiment and see this effect working in real time, try this.