this non-veg girl needs recipes for sick veggie friends!

[blessedwithboys]

Hey all!  I am an omnivore but I have to cook for an sick elderly veg couple from church.  The husband has a bad heart and the wife just got home from rehab after two back-to--back strokes.  I was thinking soup would be a good choice for them to nurse them back...

Their restrictions are NO fat, NO salt, NO sugar, NO meat, NO bread, NO cheese.  (The caps are theirs  heh heh)

All veggies are ok.  I have to assume they get their protein from legumes, cuz really, what else is left?

I made a wicked awesome lentil soup, but my (TF) version is loaded with one stick of butter per pound of lentils, and I LOVE my sea salt.  I'm not too good at using herbs for flavor, although I do have a wide variety of dried herbs in my cupboard.  I just usually put sea salt or fish oil as a base and then some type of herb in addition.

So, other than brown lentils, carrots, onions, and maybe kale or escarole shredded in to the (plain water, chicken stock free) "broth", what else can I add to satisfy a vegetarian palette?

I also have plain quinoa and dried chick peas.  Does anyone have a recipe that excludes all the items listed above?  I'm thinking maybe something with raisins and chopped nuts thrown in, but I don't know if they count fruit as sugar...

Thanks so much!  I'm a big Traditional Foods fan, so I really don't know how to adapt my recipes to fit these requirements.  :)

[Otto]

It's kind of a project, but Penelope Casas has a recipe for a vegetable paella that could be shoehorned into these restrictions. The first thing you'd need is a good vegetable stock (or no-sodium chicken stock, if they consume that). I can type it up if you're interested. There's also a broad swath of Ornish stuff, some of which isn't too bad.

[blessedwithboys]

Thanks, I found the paella recipe online.  Sounds yummy, I'll try it with brown rice!  :)

[Otto]

Yah, the original calls for sauteeing the onion and pimiento, but you can sweat the onions in stock, and I don't think roasted red peppers much need the treatment anyway. The trick is probably avoiding sticking without making a mush out of the rice.

[ETA.--Or something hard to hold before you bring it by, I mean.]

[catnip]

I make a dinner salad, it's sort of a tabbouleh type thing, that would work for someone not used to a lot of salt and fat without either. Chop two bunches of parsley and about 1/4 cup of mint leaves, add 3 cups of cooked quinoa, a handful of raisins and/or diced dried apricots, half a red onion, finely minced, the juice of one lemon, and 2 cups of cooked garbanzos. I usually add garlic, salt, olive oil and chopped almonds to it, but it works without it.

You might also check the recipes at the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/, they are mostly low fat with no added oils, and I've loved most of the recipes from there.
http://www.pcrm.org/kickstartHome/mealplan/index.cfm also has some recipes that might be suitable.