makes mouths happy

Mister loves mashed potatoes (well, potatoes in general, but he definitely loves mashed potatoes as a top three pick).  Actually, let me try that again:

Mister looooooooooves mashed potatoes.

He also loves broccoli and chickpeas and garlic.  It stands to reason, then, that Mister loved tonight's dinner: Forty-Clove Chickpeas and Broccoli from Appetite for Reduction.  Angst kind of liked it, too - he liked the little balls of "raw hummus" Mister kept giving him.

There's Mister's lunch tomorrow - one of the few times he will happily eat leftovers.  As he got up from the dinner table tonight, he proclaimed it one of the best dinners ever because it was made up of "so many favorite things!"  I must agree.  Also, in my own mindful eating of dinner, I made two discoveries - one sweet...the other less so.

I discovered the unbridled bliss of biting into a forkful of mashed potatoes to find a perfect chunk of roasted garlic inside.  Such a powerful flavor, especially because this particular chunk had a whole side that had been browned by the roasting, so it added a kind of darker, smoky aspect.

The second thing I discovered is actually more of a slow-dawning realization.  I do not have a "go to" mashed potatoes recipe.  I have recipes, and occasionally, I follow one - most of the time that is because it is directly linked to the other recipe I'm making and I feel bad making one without the other.  That was not the case tonight - tonight, I simply decided to serve the pile of roasted perfection on top of what I had hoped would be light, creamy mashed potatoes.

I have actually accomplished that, by the way - just wanted to clear that up.  I didn't quite get there tonight, though, which I'm choosing to blame on the lack of Earth Balance and soymilk for blending.  In their place, I added a fair sprinkling of kosher salt, a generous dab of olive oil, and a very rounded spoonful of hummus.  The hummus definitely helped and I can see myself using it again in that capacity, but what I'm getting to is this: I shop for my recipes, so if I have a recipe for something, I know exactly what to buy.  If I had made mashed potatoes from a recipe, I would have purchased soymilk and replenished the Earth Balance before it got down to the miserable little teaspoon currently hogging the whole tub.

Summer isn't a big time for mashed potatoes (or roasted things, for that matter), so I'm issuing myself a challenge this fall (which is creeping closer, believe it or not!).  This fall, I want to perfect my own awesome "go to" recipe for mashed potatoes so flavorful and creamy we'll forget any allegiance we ever paid to those [delightfully convenient] Country Crock mashed potatoes in a microwaveable tub.

I'm also hoping this will ward off the Baking Bug just long enough for me to protect my waistline through the winter months.  Except for two things that will probably interfere....

Celebrate Vegan, the new cookbook by Dynise Balcavage (The Urban Vegan), which I had the extraordinary fortune to be involved in through recipe-testing, will finally be released on October 18!

One short week later, Isa and Terry's new book, Vegan Pie in the Sky, will also be released on the unsuspecting public.

Stay tuned!  Every menu from now until Christmas will be made exclusively from Appetite for Reduction!


(j/k)

stinky simmers

I love cooking food that stinks up my whole house.  I truly do.  One of my mothers-in-law (I have two; my husband's an alien) told me that all she needs for her kitchen to be perfect is a flawless oven hood - which she hasn't found yet.  She doesn't seem to have anything against the scent of food while it's cooking, although she does frequently have a pot of mulling spices on a back burner when we dine there, but she can't stand smelling the food after she's eaten it.

I love her, but I think that's a little weird.

Right now, if I take a nice deep sniff of my home, I can still smell the winey-leeky-lemony goodness that characterized our dinner: Wheatberry "Paella" with Chickpeas and Leeks, courtesy of thePPK.com.

Isn't it pretty?  Can't you smell the savoriness through your screen?  It's what you can't see, though, that I think really pushed this over the edge from tasty to really-darn-good: Turkish Bay Leaves.  I always underestimate their ability to enhance a dish, but they lend this unmistakable smokiness, some kind of tangible earthiness to the dish.

The leeks smelled so good while sauteing that Mister came into the kitchen, sniffing at the air like a bloodhound (or Angst when he thinks he wants my breakfast).  I gave him a slice of roasted red pepper and sent him back to his room :)  By the way - if you ever have a recipe that calls for exactly 2 roasted red peppers and you don't feel like roasting them yourself, find Mt Olive Roasted Peppers - a 12 oz jar has two whole peppers, roasted to perfection and mostly seed-free.  Helpful Hints from Natalie (that's my imaginary by-line in VegNews).  You're welcome.

Isa admits in the recipe that the wheatberries, being all pre-steamed and whatnot, wouldn't soak up alllll the liquid, leaving it a little "saucy" to use her word.  Soupy would be my word, but it might be my fault the wheatberries didn't soak up more broth, since I steamed them about 25% longer than the recipe said to.  Although it makes for a very food-magazine-friendly photo, I was a little worried about how Mister would feel.  He's not a big fan of "sauce" lingering at the bottom of his bowl.

Also, as we sat down to eat, he seemed a little too focused on tasting the food.  Mister is a very fast eater, so whenever he takes his time, I become paranoid that he doesn't like dinner.  I thought I saw him eating around the wheatberries, which I thought might happen - I wasn't sure if they would qualify as "squishy wheat."  If they did, he didn't tell me, and I took it a positive that he followed me to the stove for a second helping.

He did drain off the "sauce," though.

SuperIsa to the rescue!

I had truly intended to heat up leftovers for dinner tonight.  I wanted a quick dinner (because someone stayed up too late baking and eating and blogging) and we have a growing colony of Rubbermaid citizens in our fridge.  I guess there's always tomorrow, because I got my brain hooked on making Isa's Seitan and Broccoli with Pantry BBQ Sauce.

Although the pile of leftovers in my fridge worries me a little bit, the half-loaf of baked seitan from Sunday worried me more.  Since it's baked, it doesn't sit in some broth in an air-tight tupperware, it's merely wrapped in foil and being a lump on the shelf.  I wasn't sure exactly how long it would sit there peacefully before trying to rile some of the other leftovers into a coup d'etat, so I decided to cook him.

Thank heavens that isn't how we do politics.  "I didn't want any competition, so I ate him."

Anyway, this ended up being a pretty quick-cooking recipe after all, which was fortunate since Mister forgot he was hungry until I was halfway through prep.  Then his belly started grumbling and he helped set the table while I finished up mixing 500 ingredients together for the BBQ sauce.

A quick aside: there are fundamental differences in the way Mister and I set the table.  I set it the same on both sides - my napkin on my right, his napkin on his right.  You get the picture.  Mister puts both napkins on the same side, although that means my right and his left.  I almost always use bowls, since it seems easier to chase rice, bulgur, and/or pasta around a vessel with sloped sides.  Mister stubbornly sets the table with plates, no matter what I'm cooking.  Similarly, the only utensils in Mister's universe are forks, occasionally knives.  Spoons, I find necessary on an almost daily basis and Mister loathes, aside from their function as a coffee stirrer.

Fortunately, the mashed potatoes made an adequate base for the chewy chunks of seitan and the tender broccoli that magically sops up all the BBQ sauce the seitan left behind.  Mashed potatoes require no gravy when eaten in this way, but I must admit, my brain was already working out how to adjust the BBQ sauce to make a hearty, thick gravy for Thanksgiving (yes, I know it's more than half a year away, but I live for the time between Thanksgiving and New Years).

Once again, on so many levels, Isa was my hero.  So many things Mister loves all on one plate: mashed potatoes, broccoli, seitan in BBQ sauce.  So many things I love: quick cooking, savory with a little hint of sweetness, textural contradiction between the fluffy mashed 'taters and chewy, "meaty" seitan, as well as the crisp, clean bite of broccoli.  This dinner is a winner and will definitely find its way to our table again.  I'm just so glad I made it to thePPK.com!!!

sleep is for the week

No, that was not an unintentional spelling error, it was a very poor pun.  I am ridiculously exhausted and for no good reason, other than being in a more or less constant state of sleep deprivation.  So, on Friday nights while the rest of the world is gallivanting around my neighborhood, I am struggling to keep my eyes open and form coherent sentences.  As such, I find that where I used to stay out until the bars closed, I'm old and tired and ready for bed before midnight as my body, aware that we've reached the end of the standard work week, tries to make up for the hours and hours of "lost" sleep I didn't get this week.

It's super cold in Philadelphia, which is a stunning way to welcome Springtime - I think it is actually below freezing right now and the heat keeps kicking on.  I decided, as I was leaving work and walking through rather blustery conditions, that there was nothing special enough about today/tonight/the recent past or foreseeable future to warrant a walk through the cold, windy night for the privilege of paying $25 for tofu.

Instead, I made a pit stop at Superfresh for black beans and fries and cooked up some bean burgers.  The excitement never ends.  One of the things I truly enjoy about my husband, however, is the bizarre and thoughtful conversations we have after dinner. Tonight we talked about clonal trees and Methuselah, a tree thought to be 4,800 years old; the oldest living non-clonal tree.  Last night we discussed the Hadron Particle Collider and how the Earth nearly imploded in 2008.  Which, of course, led to the most romantic thing said all night:

If the whole world has to implode, I hope I implode with you.

I know.  We're kind of like Romeo and Juliet.  I'm just waiting for our movie to come out.

Anyway, I have absolutely nothing interesting to say about our burgers, so I'll skip right to the menu.  I wanted to do something a little different this week.  I've actually wanted to do this for a while.  I did not use a single existing cookbook to construct my new menu - each of these recipes comes from a blog I've been following for a while, in one capacity or another.  You can link to all the blogs on the left side of the page and as I prepare each recipe, I will link back to the blog from which it came.

1. Seitan and Broccoli with Pantry BBQ Sauce from the Post Punk Kitchen, Isa's blog.

2. Pasta with Peppers and Sausage
3. Red, Gold, Black and Green Chili
4. Sicilian Market Pasta, all three from SusanV at the Fat Free Kitchen blog.

5. Meatless Meatloaf from Mama Pea at Peas and Thank You.  Mama Pea will have her first cookbook published this summer and I couldn't be happier for her.  You should pre-order the book - I'm planning to pick my copy up the moment it's out.

6. Wheatberry "Paella" with Chickpeas and Leeks, also from thePPK.com.  I'm pretty sure Isa can't write a recipe that doesn't include chickpeas...just an observation.  A fun story - apparently, she was posting about the same time I was poking around my bookmarks looking for fun food, because I went back to the PPK about a half hour after deciding on #1 and found this freshly posted recipe.  I feel kinda special about that.

7. Seitan with Prunes, a test recipe for the forthcoming UV2.  I think all the other testers are a little afraid of this recipe.  I'm not saying that I'm going into this without a little trepidation, but I will be the first person to test this recipe, despite it being posted about two months ago.  I'll admit, I'm a little worried about how Mister will feel about savory-braised prunes sharing a skillet with his seitan, but I'm willing to risk a fail dinner for the sake of testing this "scary" recipe.  You can count on a great and detailed post that night!  Unfortunately, I won't be able to share the recipe, but I'm sure I'll plug once again for you to buy the book when it comes out.

With that thought, I'm going to give up on consciousness.

spinach for the win

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finish,
'Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.

 Sometimes I can't believe there was a time I didn't know how awesome spinach is.  Fortunately, and I'm not quite sure how, spinach was one of the first veggies I became fond of upon giving up animals for dinner.  I remember my early days of being a vegetarian and taking my lunch to work.  Before I really learned how to cook, I more or less made three things in rotation:
veggie lo mein
rice with sauteed veggies
veggie burgers and fries (frozen, both)
I guess I also made pasta with red sauce pretty frequently, too.  Regardless, I'm not sure I even had real tupperware because I didn't cook enough to have leftovers.  As a result, I usually packed a sandwich for lunch at work.  It was normally the same, since I clearly didn't learn my lesson in elementary school when I ate a cheez whiz sandwich every single day of my 4th grade year.  I haven't been able to look at the stuff since.  Anyway, I made a bagel sandwich because bagels are awesome.  A Thomas bagel with a slice of soy cheese, a healthy lump of raw baby spinach, alfalfa sprouts, and another slice of cheese.  Actually, I could go for one of those again... it's been about 5-6 years since I had one.

As you can gather from the blog title, Angst also loves his spinach, and Mister, too.  I'm pretty sure it was Mister who turned me on to spinach...since Mister was the one who got me thinking about not eating animals and then introduced me to a world of vegetables prepared in tasty and unusual ways (you know, with spices other than salt and pepper).  I'm pretty sure the Raw Spinach E.Coli Scare was one of the most miserable experiences of my veggie adolescence.  I used to make spinach 2-3 times a week, but as I broadened my culinary horizons, I met so many other fascinating greens with such different character: kale, chard, lacinto kale, rainbow chard for heaven's sake!  Arugula was another great awakening and if Whole Foods still has mache this weekend, it will be mine.

However, spinach was my first and will be an enduring veggie-love.  So, tonight's dinner, a special (time-consuming) treat for Mister: Potato-Spinach Curry from Appetite for Reduction.

Mister actually cheered when I told him what dinner was.  Like I've mentioned before, you really can't go wrong feeding my husband a curry, but when you involve spinach and potatoes in that curry?  Well, let's just say my marriage is secure ;)

I continue to be amazed at the higher quality of organic spinach, even when frozen.  It's incredibly green and maintains a texture notably absent from non-organic varieties.  Whole Foods sells one-pound bags of frozen spinach, instead of 10 oz blocks of ice and green stuff, and I got such a kick out of adding the little green nuggets to the simmering ochre curry.  It didn't take long after stirring them in for the ice to melt away and reveal the verdant color hidden beneath.

I think once we get settled and our financial situation settles down, I'll have to look into getting a bigger saute pan.  I'm really starting to push the limits of this one, but it's so much more convenient than a big pot sometimes.

After adding the 2 lbs of chopped potato and 2 cups of broth, I wasn't sure there would even be room for the spinach.  When I poured the spinach in, it just kind of sat on top of the potatoes like a heaping frozen mountain, so I was really relieved when everything fit together nicely enough for me to replace the cover for a couple of minutes.  I really had forgotten how much almost all of Isa's recipes make.  I guess I thought these would make less since it's a diet cookbook, but you know what they say: you can take a girl out of the punk scene, but you can't take the punk scene (and large pots of food) out of the girl.

fresh as a midwinter day

I had no idea Roma tomatoes could taste so good in the dead middle of winter.  Do they have a different growing season from all the tomatoes that are so fresh and abundant in summer?  Are Roma tomatoes the Anti-Tomato, thriving in winter, or did I just get really lucky with the 2 lbs of Roma tomatoes so ripe they were nearly rotting in the bin?

Either way, they made Isa's Pasta e Fagioli from Veganomicon a recipe to be reckoned with.  I would even say this recipe has the chance to push Dynise's recipe from its wobbly throne.

It doesn't look like much.  I was very excited about the six cloves of garlic but after the cooking, I felt like the tomatoes looked a little anemic.  I never get tired of being wrong.  It was so good and the goodness, as far as I could tell, was completely owed to the use of fresh tomatoes.  It may be hard to believe, but this is the first Pasta e Fagioli I've made that did not involve canned diced tomatoes and I think that made all the difference.  I can't help wondering how much better it will be when I can snip some fresh oregano from my window garden...

With that, I'm off to scheme (and hopefully dream!).  Mister packed a considerable amount of his stuff today, so while I can see we're getting closer to moving, it is only serving to make me more anxious about all the stuff everywhere.  One moment of cute before I go: today marked the obliteration of almost every hiding place Angst has...so Mister made him a new little "house" since he used the old one (a large box) for packing.

Mexisraelican cuisine...figure that out

One of the things I admire about Isa's recipe creation and matching is the joy she finds in fusion.  Not trendy fusion, like French-Chinese or Nouveau Mediterranean or whatever it is Horizons does - no, Isa likes to mix things that don't belong.

I do, too, but I'm not quite as skilled at it.  For some reason, it always works with Isa's pairings.  Not so much with mine.  I know I have at least one poor pairing in the past, but tonight's was truly bizarre: Mexican and Israeli.  Perhaps we don't even need the label "Mexican," but even if we took a close look at Latino cuisine, I don't think we'd find many points of similarity with Israeli/Middle Eastern cuisine (aside from Mister's love of each).

For dinner, I made Salsa Rice and Red Beans from Vegan on the Cheap.  It was pretty simple to make, since most of the time was just letting the brown rice simmer away until it was cooked (only about 45 minutes, this time).  I cooked the rice completely separately from everything else, but it all came together in the end for a strangely sweet rice-n-beans.  I'm not sure if it was the fresh poblano or the fresh tomato, or even the canned tomato, but there was something undeniably sweet going on.

While the rice was simmering away, I had about...oh...45 minutes of free time, so I filled it with much chopping.  On my way home from work, I decided to take advantage of the not-arctic weather to stop into Superfresh for kitty litter and my usual fruitless glance where the fresh spinach should be but isn't.  One big difference today, though - there was spinach there!  I picked up a bag for tomorrow night's curry (finally), then remembered how I wanted to get a few extra veggies yesterday but didn't want to go out in the cold, so I grabbed my memory grocery list and a basket, and still remembered the kitty litter.

The fruits of my chopping was the Mega-Israeli Salad from the forthcoming UV2.

Texturally, it had many layers - crispity-crunchety peppers, more refined toothsomeness from tomatoes and cucumber, with a creamy smooth bite of avocado.  The dressing was delightfully simple and pulled everything together in the most mouth-watering way.  I didn't even get a chance to ask Mister what he thought, because before he finished chewing his first mouthful, he was exclaiming how good the salad was.

There's a tartness from the lemon that is only slightly overwhelmed by the zing of raw garlic, which only dominates the dish as much as you let it - you could also allow it to draw out the crunchiness of the raw veggies with even more intensity due to their enhanced flavor.

The salad was amazing and will absolutely find its way onto my table again (and hopefully, the tables of family and friends who ask me to bring food to gatherings).  As far as pairing it goes, I guess we'll have to play around with different main courses - it completely overpowered the Salsa Rice and Red Beans, with their subtle, sweet flavor and creamy texture.

 Mister did exactly what I expected him to do when he saw the mountain of rice and beans and tomatoes - he went to the cupboard and pulled out the tortilla chips left over from our last chili adventure.  To my amusement, he alternated between scooping up rice-n-beans and treating his salad like really garlicky salsa.  Either way, dinner got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Mister.
 

lessons learned at the cutting board

Call me a lifelong student or simply a student of life; I love learning things and applying the things I learn.  When I was actually in college and grad school, you couldn't shut me up once I got going about something I had learned or read and once I had babbled all about it to one person, the information was with me - learned.  There is something about sharing what I learn with others that helps me to more fully understand it myself.

It was really difficult to make myself go back to work yesterday - I had a three-day weekend because of taking my birthday off and at least half the country seemed to have yesterday off because of Martin Luther King Day.  I tried to give myself a pep talk by asking myself, rhetorically, I thought, what on earth I would do if I didn't go to work.  Unfortunately, I was prepared, and started listing things I would do if I stayed home.  Ultimately, I convinced me to go to work because I knew we were in for some nasty weather and I wanted to leave myself the option of calling out today if it really was bad.

That's exactly what I did.  I'm pretty sure it was fate or possibly predestination (in other words: I had predetermined to take the day off if the weather was even remotely hazardous to travel).  After thawing out from my walk home in 20something degree weather since the buses felt the best way to honor MLK was to make sure Rosa had to walk, I started making dinner.  As I was shredding my cabbage and boiling the farfalle, Mister drew my attention to the little sparkly bits of snow dancing around in the streetlamps' light.  By the time I put dinner on the table, there was actually a coating on the roads which surprised the heck out of me - I didn't think we were actually supposed to get an accumulation!  Through dinner and clean-up, the snow continued to fall - just tiny little guys, but enough of them that the 20-degree streets didn't stand a chance - and then they got bigger.  By the time we were heading to bed, the snow had turned from fluffy flakes of happy to ominous drops of freezing rain, ricocheting off the windows before coating the snow-covered streets with a layer of ice.

I got up in the morning and it looked like the rain had cleared up most of the streets, so I had some tea and breakfast, but as I listened to the moaning of the wind outside, I became more than just a little curious about the state of things, so I visited weather.com and decided now was as good a time as any to follow SEPTA's tweets and was I ever right.  For the next twenty minutes, as I hemmed and hawed about whether to risk a relapse of my fragile health to go to work today, I was bombarded with updates on this bus being rerouted and that one being cancelled, while this train was late and that one is only going half its normal route, and let's not forget about the trolleys being stopped because of "smoking manhole covers."  I decided the apocalypse was manifesting itself through public transit and said to myself, once again, "what will you do if you stay home?"  This time, though, I made a list of all the ways I would be more productive at home than at work, and when I hit the bottom of the paper, I called out.  It took a minute, including writing time, by the way.

What on earth does all this have to do with learning, you ask?
Well, nothing really, aside from allowing me a little extra time to cook dinner and forcing me to be introspective about something I thought I'd left mostly in my past for the sake of helping a student with her homework.  So, on to dinner!

Since I was well-rested (yes, I left out the part about going back to bed after leaving the list to be completed upon re-waking), I had plenty of energy to devote to making Chickpea Piccata, served on a fluffy cloud of Caulipots, both from Appetite for Reduction.  Here are some things I learned:

1. If Isa wants to help people lose weight, she needs to stop making her recipes so darn tasty.  I have not had trouble keeping my promise to my mom yet.

2. Thanks to Isa and Dynise, I have become much more daring with garlic and with shallots.  There was a time, about a month ago, actually, when I couldn't fathom preparing garlic in anyway that did not involved pressing it so that it would more or less dissolve innocuously into my food.  Now?  Check out these huge slices of garlic:

3. Shallots make me cry.  I've seen some funny pictures of onion goggles, but I've never really had any problems with onions, green onions, shallots, or garlic making me tear up...until tonight.  It was the weirdest thing; I was slicing the shallots and all of a sudden, I noticed my eyes were stinging and about to tear up and I stood upright and allowed myself a moment of confusion - it's not like tonight was the first time I'd sliced shallots.  I think the difference tonight is that I was wearing my glasses, not my contacts - can anyone else confirm this or am I just a freak?

4. Angst loves when I stay home, but he doesn't like to share.  He demonstrated his defiance tonight by hopping up onto Mister's dinner chair while I was filling our bowls and making himself very comfy.

Look at that scowl!  He was very clearly saying, MY chair.  When Mister came to sit for dinner, Angst just gave him that same angry look, as if to say, "find another chair. This one's taken."

He scrammed when Mister made like he was going to sit on him, though.

The Chickpea Piccata was absolutely fabulous.  From the minute I opened this book for the first time, that was high up on my list of things I wanted to make, and it did not disappoint.  I want to share Isa's intro because it perfectly sets you up for the amazing flavors about to meet and mingle in your mouth:

A plate of piccata is like an instant fancy dinner with all the stops.  One second you're just sitting there, all normal-like, but the moment that first forkful of lemony wine bliss touches your tongue, you're transported to candlelight and tablecloths, even if you're sitting in front of the TV.

I served the piccata over Caulipots, as Isa suggests.  Mister and I love the way this girl thinks; one of the things we missed the most after "going veg" was mashed potatoes, which doesn't make any sense, since potatoes are not an animal.  We realized, though, that there are very few things in our diet with which you can serve mashed potatoes.  Isa has changed all of that, though, with her genius scheme to used mashed potatoes as the starchy base, rather than the standard rice/grain or pasta - we love her for it.

The caulipots were unbeatable - they were just a little lighter than regular mashed potatoes, but packed a powerful punch, flavor-wise and nutritionally.  I used only two Tbsp of broth in the mashing, yet the whole batch was perfectly seasoned from that + olive oil + little bit of salt.  This may very well become my standard "mashed potatoes" recipe.  If I haven't said it yet, please do yourself and everyone you cook for a big favor: break open your piggy bank and head to your local bookstore to get yourself a copy of Appetite for Reduction.

at the root of reduction

One of the things I have really enjoyed about being off from work (besides not being at work) is the almost unlimited time I've had to mess around in my kitchen.  Honestly, the only way my kitchen capers could have been more fulfilling this week would have been if I was playing with all my new toys and new recipes in a...you guessed it - new kitchen!  All good things in time...

I actually started my day with a light breakfast - multi-grain toast with Earth Balance and a sliced Rome Beauty apple - a little P!nk to get me moving, and then I showered and got dressed as though I was actually going to do something productive today.  And eventually, I did go food and toiletry shopping.  First, though, I had a wonderful late lunch with my sister and some Beaujolais.

We went to Mi-Lah because I want to take everyone there at least once and because Mister won't go with me.  My sister is not vegetarian, but she appreciates diverse food and has an open mind.  With this most recent trip, I have now dined there for Sunday Brunch, mid-afternoon lunch, and dinner.

I had a seitan-zucchini cheeseburger with sweet potato fries.  I'll admit, that burger looks less than appetizing...actually, it looks less than cooked, but when I bit into it, I was very happy.  The seitan they use would best be compared to chicken and although it's a little revolting to look at, it tasted fabulous.  The sweet potato fries are incredible and I'm not ashamed to say they were a big influence in my decision to order this platter.

Sister, recently infatuated with Pho, ordered just that, complete with slices of tofu and "ham."  It looks savory and comforting, doesn't it?  Perhaps Beaujolais was not the most fitting accompaniment to her Vietnamese hot pot, but she didn't complain.

We shared a delightfully overflowing bowl of miso-braised kale on the side.  I cannot get enough of this stuff and must figure out how to replicate it at home.

Speaking of home... upon returning there, I apprised Mister of Sister's and my gustatory exploits and then headed out to find things to fill our fridge.  It makes me ineffably sad that I only had to shop for four dinners because that means I'm halfway through my staycation and I am absolutely not prepared to return to work yet.  This point is kind of like my normal Saturday night, where I know I still have all of Sunday to relax and not be at work, but I'm already dreading Monday.

Anyway, I shopped for my abridged menu, completely selected from Appetite for Reduction which includes:

1. Miso Udon Stirfry with Greens and Beans

2. Red Lentil and Root Veggie Dal

3. Potato-Spinach Curry

4. Irish Stew with Potatoes and Seitan

Tonight, I made Red Lentil and Root Veggie Dal and it was a delicious inauguration to my new cookbook.  I have at least a dozen Dal recipes, but I pass them by, one by one, because I can't figure out how it's supposed to be a main dish; ordinarily, there is nary a vegetable to be found.  I was elated, upon perusing AfR to find a Dal recipe than incorporates not one, not two, but three vegetables - carrots, parsnips, and turnip/rutabaga.

It's not much to look at - I guess simmering for 30 minutes with red lentils will do that to you.  It smelled very pungent and tasted delicious.  I'm pleased to have found a good dal recipe, and best of all, it is extremely filling!  I served it over brown rice, which did a marvelous job of soaking up the extra broth.  I'll do a more thorough review of the book once I've made more recipes (but before I return to the chaos at work), but for now, let me encourage everyone who was the recipient of a giftcard this Christmas/Hannukah to head to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Appetite for Reduction.

viva espana! (and a bunch of other places)

There are so many things to love about Veganomicon - probably too many to count.  For one thing, it's huge and full of just about any recipe you could imagine wanting, as well as several that never occurred to you until someone else said "blueberry brownies" and you thought back to that dark chocolate bar with dried blueberries your darling husband gave you as a gift on some random Monday.  Another great thing about this book is the center section where they keep all the slobber-inducing photographs of amazing looking, cruelty-free food (unless, of course, you take into account the inexcusable cruelty that those pictures don't pop out to create those very meals all by themselves on your dining table).  And of course, there are the sarcastic, wry recipe intros, such as:

If these chickpeas could talk, they'd probably be a little fresh and need at least a PG-13 rating due to extreme sauciness.  (On the other hand, if chickpeas could talk they probably wouldn't be vegan anymore.)

 In addition to all that awesomeness, there's one more thing: the incredible multi-ethnicity our authors bring to the proverbial table.  Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn with an Indian name and a penchant for chickpeas, and Terry Hope Romero, a lovely latina married to a man so Greek, his mother brought her fresh oregano from Greece (way to go, Terry!).   The way all of these cultures mix and marry and rebound off of one another culminates in some of the most innovative and tastebud-challenging dishes I've had the pleasure of making and eating.

Tonight, I finished our recent tour of Veganomicon by making Chickpeas Romesco on Garlic Saffron Rice.  In case you're super curious by now, since every time the past 10 days that I've mentioned this recipe I've crossed out the Saffron, Mister and I are not big fans, so I leave it out, to no detriment that I've noticed.  I've made this before and I think I thought "Romesco" was a made-up word (not that Isa would ever do that), but this time around my curiosity got to me, so I checked it out.  Turns out Romesco sauce is a real thing!  Appropriately enough, it was born in Spain - for some reason, I had gotten the impression that this recipe came from Terry's mind, which makes sense (if it's true), since she has recently released her own solo cookbook, Viva Vegan!

After filling up on dinner, Mister decided to invade Angst's personal space by lying down on the floor to digest.

As long as Mister was willing to pet him, he didn't mind so much. 

Mister?  Where ya goin'?

In other news, I chopped up an Anaheim chili to saute with the shallots and garlic and I really thought it would pack a little more heat than it did.  I am quite a bit trepidatious to put this out there, but I might just be willing to start experimenting with jalapenos again sometime in the nearer future (heck, I've taken an 18 year break, why not?).  If I find that courage hiding somewhere in my purse or the back of a cupboard, I'll let you all know how it turns out!

blue and sunny in Philadelphia

Last night I made Orecchiette with Cherry Tomatoes and Kalamata Tapenade from VwaV, primarily because I knew it was useless to try hide the Kalamatas from Mister for very long.  I bought the oil-cured black olives to distract him, but I'm pretty sure it was only a temporary fix.  Imagine my surprise, then, when he came to visit me in the kitchen and when his eyes widened and his mouth formed an O, he reached past the olives and stole a cherry tomato.  Granted, I had already hidden all of the olives that I needed under a layer of parsley and garlic in the food processor...

In completely unrelated news, I've recently rediscovered how nicely those colors (deep green and dark purple) complement one another and bring out the blue in my eyes when worn as eye shadow.

Anyway, dinner was absolutely delicious, and there was just enough left for a work-lunch.  I was conservative in my helping, though, because I really wanted to leave a little room for these sweeties:

Sunny Blueberry-Corn Muffins, also from VwaV and sparked into the front of my mind by Dynise's recent attempts to use up her own surplus of perfectly plump, ripe blueberries.

I think these are the most attractive muffins I have ever made.  They are little and tart and a little crunchy from the cornmeal.  I think I'm blueberry-muffined out, but I still have my bookmark in Isa's recipe for Blueberry Coffee Cake (New York-style, baby!) and they're only getting better (and closer!).

I had only two recipes left on my menu from which to choose tonight.  This actually resulted in a lot more thought than you would think necessary, but I have a bag of beluga lentils burning a hole in my cupboard, a few stalks of asparagus that desperately need to be used or thrown away in the next 24 hours...and I have mentioned before my reticence to waste food.  My mind started putting some pieces together when I saw the asparagus and then my eyes settled on the salsa also begging to be put to use before drifting back to my treasured lentils.  I thought of making tonight my improv night, but two things stopped me:

First, I wasn't quite ready to expend the mental energy necessary to put together an edible and fascinating recipe.  Tomorrow, most likely, so stay tuned!

Second, I want a date.  I want to try to convince Mister to take me out to dinner later this week.  It's as simple as that.

So I made Cajun Red Beans and Rice from The Accidental Vegan.  It's so tasty and very easy.  I supplemented the wimpy green pepper I had with a beautiful but beginning-to-shrivel yellow pepper, saving some to slice and add to our salads.

I used up more than half of what remained of the "spicy" mixed greens from the FarMar, topping them with sliced yellow bell pepper and quartered (and pitted) cherries.  I can't believe how wonderful those little cherries are and you can bet your bottom dollar Saturday morning will find me back in the Italian Market buying more.  I turned my fingertips a charming shade of crimson (my favorite color) while pitting and slicing them.

Coincidentally, my hair color (well, the part that isn't black) is called "Cherry Bomb."

I used up all my clever on the menu

I am embarrassed to say how long I've been sitting here trying to come up with a clever post title to catch your eye, but I'm having a moment best captured by one of those souvenir tee-shirts that say something like, "my friend went to Hollywood and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt."

On the up-side, though, I do have a very varied and creative menu to share with you!  First, though, is dinner:

Tonight, I made Snobby Joes from Veganomicon.  Mister wasn't sure he was ready for dinner when I started cooking, but when the scent of green peppers and garlic sauteing in olive oil reached his nose he decided he could probably eat something.

Or three somethings.  Yes, Mister had 3 Snobby Joes (in the time it took me to eat my salad and one Snobby Joe).  Turns out they were pretty good and he was hungrier than he realized.  I was finally emptying out from my low-calorie lunch with Mom...

Banana-Walnut pancakes with caramel syrup.  Very tasty.  Tasty enough that I probably kept eating well past where I should have stopped, but you only live once, right?

Anyway, back to the Snobby Joes.  They were nearly indescribable in their near-perfection.  I would have trouble trying to improve a recipe like this - Isa's husband is very lucky.  My husband is also very lucky that I accidentally stumbled upon Vegan With A Vengeance and thought the title was too funny to pass by.  The tomato flavor was good and the earthiness of the lentils prevented the acidity of the tomato sauce from dominating the dish.

Now, let's move on to my diverse and cleverly crafted menu for the upcoming week:

1. Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu accompanied by Garlicky Kale with Tahini Dressing, both from Isa's wacky brain, but from two separate cookbooks.  Just go buy them all.

2. Penne with Asparagus and Spring Herbs from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.  This is a huge book and I have had it for a few years and barely scraped the surface.  One of the reasons I continuously buy new cookbooks (besides that they keep coming out with newer and better ones) is because I tend to get into a comfortable rut once I've had a book for...well, a month.  I'm feeling quite creative lately (you may have noticed a bunch of new recipes after months of nothing), so I thought I would sit down and try to see this "old" cookbook through new eyes.  It appears to have worked.

3. Chickpeas in Eggplant-Tahini Sauce also from VTCC.  Shh - don't tell Mister about the eggplant - I have some tricks up my [short] sleeve!

4. Hunan-Style Orange "Beef" and Asparagus Stirfry also from VTCC.  Asparagus season is most definitely coming to an end, so this week's menu features more or less a "last hoorah."  Also, I thought it might be handy to have a Chinese-ish recipe in case I need to make up for #3.

5. Tofu Saag from The 30 Minute Vegan.  I think next week I'll try to see if I can actually go a full week without an Indian-inspired dish on the menu.  I think this cuisine so frequently infiltrates veg-diets because the religious beliefs of that culture are much in line with vegan ideals.  Nevertheless, I'm starting to sweat cumin and coriander and I'm pretty sure my colleagues won't appreciate that in the summer.

Isa as Pie

Okay, wow, that was horrible, but I couldn't help myself.  I feel only slightly better knowing she pokes fun at herself when naming her rhyming "Isa Pizza," but I will make every attempt to avoid being that punny again.

Completely by accident, I ended up making my two Isa-authored meals back to back.  I guess her recipes are just that irresistible! Last night, I made Jerk Seitan on Coconut Rice and it was fabulous, just as I remembered it.  I really do love the flavor combo of the tangy, yet savory and very intense jerk spices with the subtly sweet coconut rice.

It smelled so good when it was just sizzling away in my saute pan and I love that the seitan browned and became crisp around the edges, though you can't really see that in the picture.  I used a new kind of seitan from White Wave and it was okay, but a little gummy - it felt as though I had overcooked it.

Tonight, I made Orecchiette with Cherry Tomatoes and Kalamata Tapenade from VwaV for the first time ever.  I have passed over this recipe countless times because the tapenade just seemed like too much work.  I have learned, though, from similar mistakes in the past, so I decided to give it a go.  Just like my last experience, I could kick myself for not making the effort sooner - it was not difficult at all (thus the wretchedly punny title for tonight's post) and smelled magnificent.  The flavor combination of the winey but salty kalamatas and the sweetness of newly ripe grape tomatoes, sauteed in just a bit of olive oil and garlic was nothing short of outstanding and resulted in unashamed second helpings for Mister and I.

The more observant of you might notice that I managed to find the most unique looking orecchiette on the market.  Or, you could be snickering behind your hand and saying, "Doesn't she know that's farfalle?" 

Actually, while I am still surprised that Superfresh even stocks orecchiette, I am not at all surprised that they hid it on the second to top shelf, just far enough behind the farfalle to exceed my reach.  Because the staff is about as helpful as they are skilled at stocking shelves, I decided it would be easier and less aggravating to just choose a different pasta.  So there you go - farfalle-shaped orecchiette.

bad, good, better

I believe I mentioned that my Valentine's Day plans were put on hold due to appropriately red drops of water dripping from my bedroom ceiling? Moreso, that our attempt to go out to dinner was delayed by the lack of response from our unmotivated maintenance men? When we finally heard from them(on Saturday night, after our second call), the best they could tell us was that a roofer was coming out on Monday, but on Tuesday, we still had some dripping. When we called again to get a status update, we were told that apparently the roofer was frightened of the snow, but the latest our rotting ceiling would be defended from more melting snow was Friday. That is where tonight's tale begins.

I returned home from a rather busy day at work on Friday and fortunately, found parking with much greater ease than I did on Fat Tuesday. By the way, I don't think we should have Mardi Gras anymore until people start observing Lent again. That's not fair - some people do make sacrifices and life changes during this time of repentance - Kate Moss is going meatless on Mondays! Anyway, when I came home, Mister greeted me with a hug, a kiss, and these words:

"I have good news, bad news, and great news!"
Good news: whoever needed to work on the roof did so and now there's no more leak.
Bad news: there is also no water in our pipes.
Great news (in Mister's world): no water = no cooking = Chinese take-out

I have to hand it to him - if I had been home before he took the initiative to get the Chinese food, I probably would have chosen something else, so kudos to him for being slick and ordering it before I got home. I was chopsticks deep in broccoli when I heard the horrific sound of glugGLUGglugrumblerumble and then a slow dripping sound as the water restored itself to us and the toilet started filling up. This is one more thing I love about my husband: he is absolutely brilliant. He thinks of things other [normal] mere mortals would not think of - like flushing the toilet after we lost water so he would hear it filling up when we got it back. Well played, love.

So, today, the good news is that we still have water where we're supposed to and we don't have water where it doesn't belong. The bad news is that the snow taking up multiple parking spots still hasn't melted. The better news is that I rekindled a grand old flame tonight when I made my dear Isa's French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme. I had forgotten just how amazing that soup is, despite the three posts I've already devoted to that very subject. In addition to this very earthy, savory, and downright meaty vegan soup, I made two of the prettiest salads I think I've ever made - and I've been pretty impressed with some of my salads.
Mixed organic greens from Earthbound Farm, mixed organic sprouts (clover, onion, alfalfa), half of a clementine orange, red bell pepper, and kalamata olives. The greens were fresh tasting and varied in flavor and boldness, the sprouts were nutty in flavor and a little crunchier than I expected. The clementine is perfectly ripe and the olives are almost overpoweringly salty. Odd combination, but a good salad, all things considered.

Dr. Atkins' worst nightmare

That's me! I know I'm not alone, but sometimes I look at what I'm eating/cooking and think that Dr. Fadkins would have a heart attack (ironically, he did). Today was Carb Day in my home.

Breakfast: oatmeal
snack: slice of bread with Earth Balance
Lunch: PB sandwich
snack: pan-seared apple
Dinner: carbs cooked with carbs and covered in carbs (more details in a moment)

I remember, at the height of the Carbs-Are-Evil Craze, being in the middle of a grocery store and just getting all the things I normally got and suddenly noticing all of the absolutely horrified looks I was getting. Women were literally stopping in their tracks to stare at me. Naturally, I became a little nervous and self-conscious, but then I laughed inside my head when I realized the source of their horror. Inside my cart I had:
a few different kinds of pasta
a loaf of bread
burger buns
a bag of rice
a box of cereal
fruit

Obviously, there were various vegetables and other things, but those were the things my fellow shoppers were staring at in awe. They were then looking at me as if to say, "How can you eat carbs and still be thin? Don't you know carbs make you fat??" Of course, what seemed to escape the attention of all these carb-starved dieters was what was NOT in my cart: chips, cookies, ice cream, candy, and other crap. Newsflash! Those things are what really make you fat.

So, now that I have absolutely blown your mind, let's talk about my carbalicious dinner. Tonight, I subjected my husband to a feminist version of his favorite dinner: Shepherdess Pie from Veganomicon. I made a couple of substitutions, due to my husband's trouble with tempeh and distaste for mushrooms. I've mentioned "pet ingredients" before - Nava's is sundried tomatoes, Robin's is soy "meat" crumbles, and it seems to me that Isa's are mushrooms and tempeh - Mister's mortal enemies.
It was very tasty and extremely photo-friendly. I think one of the things I was happiest about was the mashed potato topping - it blows my mind that the creamiest, most spreadable mashed potatoes I have ever made from scratch are vegan. I think it was my secret ingredient.

You want to know what it is, don't you?
If I told you, it wouldn't be my secret ingredient.
Anyway, Mister compared it to a potpie but with a mashed potato topping. He stated quite bluntly that he prefers Sarah's Savoury Shepherd's Pie. I liked it, but I could think of a couple of variations I'd like to try, which would probably bring it more in line with Mister's preferences. He did agree that the mashed potatoes were awesome and he's a big mashed potato fan. We actually ate a tub of mashed potatoes for dinner one night of our honeymoon. Why not? It was our honeymoon.

So, 3 lbs of potatoes, 1 cup of peas (high starch vegetable), 1 cup of corn (same thing), and flour to thicken the gravy equals Atkins Apocalypse. You can keep your fatty corpses, sir. I still remember when a friend of mine fell victim to the hype. I watched him eat a combo plate of filet mignon and tilapia, nestled on a bed of really tasty looking risotto...which he scraped into the garbage.

I am firmly convinced that the reason the Atkins thing took off is because carbohydrate is an essential macronutrient and if you do not get enough of it, your brain does not function correctly.

Now we push the negativity into the corner and take a moment to be thankful:
1. I am thankful for this "3-day weekend" to spend time with my husband before my schedule turns upside down.

2. I'm grateful for the four walls that keep the sub-freezing cold out of my home (for the most part).

3. I am grateful the wind hasn't blown out the pilot on the heater or the oven. Yet.

4. I am grateful that my sister will be home in Pennsylvania for two weeks in ten days!

catching up and looking ahead

Ordinarily, I save my blogging for after dinner has been cooked, eaten, and cleaned up...for obvious reasons, I would think. Tonight is different, though. I'm not sure I'll be making dinner, since Mister ate a very late lunch and I'm actually going out tonight! My sister is in town from Arizona and we will be braving the cold, nasty, rainy weather to hang out and get a drink or two.

Tomorrow, the whole family (my side, anyway) will be getting together for a late lunch soiree so everyone can see my sister while she's here - only a few short days. My mother, having seen all the tasty cupcakes I've been posting lately, has requested that I make a batch and bring them. Depending on my mood, I may make two! If I am able to make it to the grocery store before we go tomorrow, I may also make and bring some other fun tasty treats. Because my dear mother reads my blog, I'll be keeping mum (ha ha, get it? Yes, that was stupid.) regarding exactly what I'm making so I can surprise her tomorrow.

While the rain kept me inside earlier today, I kept busy drinking copious amounts of coffee (and dunking a few Sweetzel's Spiced Wafers as well) and flipping through my cookbooks. I was on a dual mission - plotting the coming week's menu, of course, but also looking for fun finger foods to bring to my parents' home tomorrow. I think I have it figured out - I have my grocery list made, but the gross weather and the fact that I had to work a little today prevented me from actually using it until tomorrow. Here's a preview of the week's coming attractions (sorry - I have movies on my brain):

1. Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from Vegan With A Vengeance. This is a great recipe Isa created to prove you don't need eggs to make a casserole. I've made it a few times - the first time it was palatable, but a little dry and chunky. The second time I used my food processor to help with the chunkiness issue (it wasn't necessarily a good chunky) and it worked magnificently. I have a few tricks up my sleeve for this third making - I'll let you know when we get there.

2. Jerk Seitan on Coconut Rice both recipes from VwaV, too. Usually, I serve the coconut rice with the Pomegranate BBQ Tofu, but I can imagine the flavors complementing the Jerk spices as well. I made this a long time ago and I recall an enthusiastic seal of approval from Mister.

3. Chickpea & Spinach Curry also from VwaV. I guess it's just an Isa-week. By the way, everything I intend to make for my family tomorrow also comes from Isa's brain. Anyway, evidently this week's menu is kind of chickpea-heavy, but this recipe is just too damn good to skip. There's also something inherently satisfying about squeezing the juice out of whole tomatoes and then tearing them apart with your bare hands after a long day in the office.

4. Red Lentil Coconut Curry - I made this for Mister's Birthday Curry in August. It's probably okay to repeat by now. I went a little crazy with the coconut milk for a while there, but after a little break, we're good to go!

5. Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan - well, now that I have that whole, big, brand new bottle of Tamari, it would really be a shame not to reprise this dish, wouldn't it?

6. Peppered Pasta

Well, I'm off for now - Sister will be here in about an hour!

vegan cupcakes take over my brain

Chocolate and pumpkin and chai, oh my! I'm done for, seriously - this almost-winter-winter-still-winter baking season is going to be deadly for my figure. I blame Isa and Terry and most of all, my new colleague who kindly let me borrow her copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World to look over this weekend. On the back of the book there is a warning: "prepare for Total Cupcake Domination" and it's true - my life will never be the same.

I flipped through the book, just checking things out and I started marking off a few I wanted to try this weekend (tomorrow) and soon came to the realization that although I have been saying for years that I don't like cake...I can't live without this cookbook. I need to make:
Pineapple Right-Side-Up Cupcakes
Chocolate Mint Cupcakes
Banana Split Cupcakes
Toasted Coconut Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Frosting
Chai Latte Cupcakes
Tiramisu Cupcakes
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cinnamon Icing (cinnamon??? mmmm....)
Apple Cider Cupcakes
Cappuccino Cupcakes with Espresso Creme

I would say that those nine alone are reason enough to hunt down and make this book mine.

And of course, the book is sprinkled throughout with cunning and sarcastic commentary. For example, at the beginning of the book, Isa and Terry provide an A to Z list of reasons to have a cupcake cookbook, including these two gems:
LOVE: Nothing says love like a cupcake does. If you don't bake someone a cupcake then you don't really care about them.
VOLUPTUOUS: Doesn't your butt need a little extra padding? Sure it does.

I will leave it at that. And one last thing: buy this book.

In other news, I put together my menu for the upcoming week so I can shop for it tomorrow before going to another fantastic event in the evening (what a fun weekend!).

1. Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic & Navy Beans (from Veganomicon) I have looked at the recipe a few times, but it looked like a lot of work. Then I saw it on a blog I visit and it just looked too good to not make. So I'm making it this week.

2. French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme (also from Veganomicon) Yes, it's the same one I made just a few weeks ago, but it's really that good. I tried to resist. I failed. I'm sure other people repeat recipes more frequently than monthly.

3. Pasta Della California (also from Veganomicon). It looked fun and I can't have soup for dinner every night.

4. Seitan Chow Fun (from Vegan Express) You didn't think I was leaving poor Nava behind in my Isa-worship, did you?

5. Ginger Cakes with Garlic Vegetables

Tonight we had Savoury Shepherd's Pie from How It All Vegan. It's one of Mister's favorite dinners. More or less anything involving potatoes, especially mashed, will make my husband happy. I guess he's a seitan-and-potatoes kind of guy after all. I made my mashed potatoes in my food processor and it was definitely an interesting experience. I don't know if it was the Yukon Gold potatoes (usually I get red potatoes) or the soymilk or the Earth Balance, or possibly just the food processor, but they were much glue-ier than normal. Or perhaps I've just gotten too used to prepackaged, microwaveable mashed potatoes. They still tasted good and I didn't get any complaints, and there were a few absolutely perfectly creamy and buttery bites.
Other fun bits about dinner: I used up the last of my French green lentils instead of my SuperFresh generic lentils and I believe I could taste a difference. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of onions. I just hate their texture and despise the way they stay on your breath for what feels like a week. Then there's the whole dehydration thing. Anyway, most of the time, when a recipe calls for onions, I just ignore it. In fact, I've gotten so good at ignoring the word "onion" that I don't even see it in recipes anymore. When I looked closely at this recipe that I've made dozens of times, I saw that it called for an onion (like damn near every vegan/vegetarian recipe seems to) and a little lightbulb ignited over my head.

The same great colleague who brought me a big bag of chocolate mint a few weeks ago brought me a bag of bounty from his garden the other day. It contained:
lemon thyme
spearmint
a wine red hot pepper, and...
chives!

So I grabbed the bag, pulled out some very long chives and (after washing them, of course) chopped them up nice and small and added them to the sauteing veggies. It brought a fun and unique taste to a dish I've made so many times before and with NO aftertaste. Color me happy.

soup's on!

Having had the last of the lentil soup for lunch today, I came to the conclusion that if I was playing one of those silly games where people ask you questions like, "if you could only eat one soup for the rest of your life, what would it be?" my answer would be Isa's Amazing Lentil Soup. When I made it originally and posted about it, I included an excerpt from Veganomicon in which Isa writes that you'll never need another lentil soup recipe. I would like to amend her statement: you will never need another soup recipe. Period. I have eaten that soup on three occasions over the past week and every time I put the spoon in my mouth I am astonished anew by how delicious it is.

So, can anyone tell me why I pushed my luck and made another soup tonight? Actually, the answer to that is, "so I could take the menu off the freezer door and post the new one," since that was the last recipe on last week's menu. That does not explain, however, why there is another soup on the new menu. I digress - the point is, tonight I made Double Pea Soup with Roasted Red Peppers from Veganomicon. It was very good, made with split peas and "regular" peas, and very colorful from the green peas, orange carrots, and red peppers.
Also, today I did indeed return to Whole Foods to clear out their supply of my precious Nectar bars. See, it's funny - I go through snack phases and I'm either all about the bars or I absolutely want nothing to do with them. I had been on a raw rage due to a very pre-packaged and carbolicious winter, so I wouldn't even entertain the notion of a snack other than an apple, pear, cup of strawberries, you get the picture: Fruit in all it's untouched glory. And I'm sure that in the middle of February when all fruit is nasty and most of it has been trucked/flown in from other parts of the WORLD (not even country), I will crave fresh fruit like no one's business. At the moment, however, I am all about the bars.

I babbled about all of that just now because I think it's funny how I wouldn't have cared one whit about Clif discontinuing the Nectar line a few months ago and now I regard it as an apocalyptic tragedy. Here is my shrine to Nectar:
I have never actually had the lone Cranberry, Apricot, Almond Nectar bar in the middle, but when I went to Whole Foods, they had the 4 Cacao bars I snatched up, the 3.5 boxes of Lemon Vanilla Cashew of which I took 2, about 6 boxes of Cherry Pomegranate, and then these bars. I believe there are probably 6 boxes of what sounds like a teeth-achingly sweet bar for good reason, so I thought I'd see if the Cran-Apri-Almond bars were worth hording.

Finally, as if Fate had aligned certain factors to soften the trauma of Nectar's slow disappearance, Chocolate Covered Katie is hosting an Amazing Grass Chocolate SuperFood bars Giveaway! I entered, of course, and if you're interested in possibly trying some of these bars for free, just follow the link and read about the contest! While you're over there, check out the rest of her blog - it's primarily her fault I even remembered my love for the convenience of getting two fruit servings in a neatly wrapped bar. She focuses primarily on breakfast and dessert as far as I can tell, so she has some absolutely incredible ideas for that all-important first meal of the day.