Simple foods

Me in my new apron.

To be honest, I prefer simple foods. I would rather have a peach than a piece of peach pie. I don't like extremes of saltiness or sweetness, or heavy flavoring and spicing. But you know, I'm playing at a food blog, and no one wants to read about steamed cauliflower. So although most of what I eat is much simpler than you might think, my blog posts don't always reflect that. I blog about the more interesting or unusual dishes we eat, or restaurant food we've consumed, or vegan items I'm asked to review. But normally, we don't go out of our way to cook fancy gourmet meals or recreate elaborate meat or dairy dishes in vegan form, nor do we regularly use non-dairy cheese other than occasionally on pizza. So you see, our gustatory lives are quite boring.

Daiya cheese pizza with "pepperoni" (tester recipe)

In my last post I included a recipe for a kale soup typical of what we might consider a fine meal. Along with a salad or a crusty loaf of bread or maybe just some rice, that would be it. My husband will eat an apple for dessert, and I might have a small orange or a few dates. I'm telling you this because I've received a number of inquiries from new or aspiring vegans asking how difficult it will be to be vegan, or how expensive it might be. New vegans are more likely to try to recreate familiar foods as they transition to a new way of life. But I don't want anyone to think we depend on fake foods or complicated preparations for our meals. Nope. We love our veggies.

Salted caramel wheat treats. Yum. (tester recipe)

Lately I've been testing recipes for a cookbook being developed by Celine and Joni. The cookbook is about substitutions — vegan for omnivorous. So, you've been seeing lots of, well, substitutions. Some are things I would make anyway, like chickpea salad, and some not so much, like baby back ribz. It's fun to make stuff like this, or to serve it to company, and we've been enjoying our testing a lot. Besides, it's never a bad idea to have a few good seitan recipes on hand. (Seitan was used by Buddhist monks in the 7th century so it's not a weird "new" vegan food.) I usually cut back on the salt used in the recipes because I'm pretty health conscious and excess salt can cause health issues. But also, because I don't eat a lot of processed foods, I've become very sensitive to the intense natural flavors of fruits, vegetables, grains and beans, and it takes very little additional salt or sugar to make things taste perfectly seasoned. I'm not saying we only eat barely seasoned food — sometimes we make things very spicy — but usually our foods are less seasoned than what might be considered average.

Baby back ribz try #2 (tester recipe) Still not sticky and gooey but closer!

I enjoy some very salty things like olives, as an accent to a meal, but if everything is salty, I find it distasteful. It almost burns my tongue. The same is true of very sweet things; they don't taste good to me. When I bake for others, I usually use more sweetener so my baked goods will be more like what other people enjoy. I'm always surprised, when I think I've made something much too sweet, to hear someone say, "I really like this. It's not too sweet." Oh well.

Just so you can see how truly boring our eating can be, here's a soup I made for lunch on Saturday. But really, it was delicious. And so simple. You can flavor it any way you like to suit your own palate.

Simple cauliflower, carrot, potato soup

• 1/2 large head of cauliflower, cut in large pieces
• 1 large potato, peeled and cut in small dice
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut in small dice
• 2 cups water
• 1 to 3 teaspoons mellow white miso (to taste)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• low sodium vegetable broth
• fresh ground pepper

optional

• sliced scallion
• minced parsley
• fresh or dried herbs

1. Place the vegetables and water in a pressure cooker. Bring to pressure and cook 5 minutes. Release pressure.
2. Use a hand-blender in the pot or add cooked veggies and cooking water to a blender bowl along with miso, onion powder and vinegar, and blend until creamy. Add broth to desired consistency, and blend. Adjust seasoning if needed.
3. Return to pot and gently reheat if needed. Place in bowls and add a grind of pepper. Add garnishes as desired.

Along with the soup we had leftover polenta which I sautéed in the wok, and a salad, and our adorable granddaughter who was visiting, had tofu fingers. She used the soup as a dip for the tofu, which had been dredged in potato starch and sautéed.

My new cupcake apron up close.

We went to our son and d-i-l's house for dinner Saturday night, and our dil made a delicious Caribbean stew called Island Gumbo from "The Urban Vegan" cookbook. It was just right for a cold, damp winter evening. I brought some cookies and bars culled from the stash that went to the bake sale on Sunday.

Now here's something my husband made all on his own. He's not really into plating, so it's a little hard to see what it is, but it's a stacked portobella mushroom dish he adapted from "Real Food Daily." It had a layer of baked polenta on the bottom, and portobella, carrots, red pepper, onions and a light tomato sauce on the top. It was amazingly delicious.

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Bake sale for Haiti

Today there was a vegan bake sale for Haiti and I contributed some baked goods. Yes, genuinely sweet ones! I made Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, and one of the tester recipes from the cookbook. Instead of just packaging the goodies in plastic baggies like I usually do for bake sales, I made cellophane packages tied with ribbon. They looked very cute if I do say so myself.

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Valentine's Day idea
Meredith from Farm Sanctuary asked me to post this, and I'm happy to do so. Sponsoring an animal is a gift of love that fits well with Valentine's Day — or any day.

This Valentine’s Day, open your heart to the rescued animals at Farm Sanctuary. Each of these individuals has a huge capacity for love and a story to share that will fill you with hope and inspiration.
Sponsor an animal for yourself and share your Valentine’s Day spirit with one of the sweet animals at our shelters. Or, give a sponsorship as a gift because there’s no better way to show that someone special in your life how much you care. All of our sanctuary residents depend on sponsors to provide them with nourishing food, safe refuge, veterinary care, and everything else they need for a happy and healthy life.
Sponsors receive an adoption certificate with a color photograph of their adopted friend, an adoption card, an invitation to schedule a VIP tour to meet their sponsored animal, and other benefits depending on the animal selected. Click here to see a list of our sponsorship packages.
In the name of love for all beings, sponsor one of the farm animals below this Valentine’s Day! Or, sponsor them all to receive or share a whole barnyard full of love! You can also make a special one-time gift to the animals.

Mushroom-garlic-kale soup etc.

There was a recipe for mushroom and kale soup in a recent issue of Vegetarian Times that sounded so perfect I couldn't wait to make it. I've adapted the recipe to suit my taste and pantry and offer it to you here. Last night we served the soup for a casual company supper. (Recipe at end of post.)



With the soup we had a salad of mixed greens, cucumbers, carrots, celery, grape tomatoes and olives.



And bread made from the basic recipe found in "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day". (When I make this bread I usually change the proportions slightly, and use white whole wheat flour instead of regular whole wheat. I use 6-1/2 cups www flour, 1 cup unbleached white, 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten, 1 tbsp. yeast, 1-1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tbsp. sucanot, 2 tbsp. olive oil, 4 cups warm water.) You can find the complete information and instructions here. A video is available here. (Not all the breads in the book are vegan but they are easily adaptable.)



We also had baby back ribz— a tester recipe for Celine and Joni's upcoming cookbook. They are supposed to be all sticky-gooey with barbecue sauce so I slipped a little on that score but they were still delicious.



Since I'm mentioning tester recipes, here's one for mock tuna salad made with tempeh. It didn't taste like tuna to me but it tasted great!



Above you see a bowl of quinoa soup we were served for dinner by our son and his girlfriend. It's topped with chopped peanuts and avocado, and is a favorite of mine. It's a traditional Ecuadorian food, and you can find a recipe for a very similar soup here. For dessert we had chocolate peanut butter pillows from "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar" but I was so fixated on eating my cookies that I completely forgot to take a picture. Too bad, because they were gorgeous!



This is try #2 of frito misto. I really liked this version but it's still not perfect. Sigh.



Last but not least, we just couldn't give up on Turnpike Pizza's vegan (Daiya cheese) pizza without giving it another chance. The idea of vegan pizza this close to our house is just too alluring. So we tried again, this time telling them to go light on the cheese and heavy on the mushrooms. The resulting pizza was MUCH better. It had large slices of tomato and much less cheese. For some reason, the crust seemed completely different, too. It was not the soft-pretzel dough of our last experience, but a much chewier, crispier version of pizza. I wonder, if we order again, what our pizza will be like.



Mushroom, kale and garlic soup adapted from Vegetarian Times

• 8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 cups thinly sliced fresh mushrooms (I used crimini and white button)
• 10 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup brown rice vinegar
• 4 cups low-sodium broth
• 2 cups mushroom water (from soaking the shiitake mushrooms)
  
• 1 large bunch kale, washed and sliced
  
• 1 can no-salt cannelini beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 green onions, washed, trimmed and thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup brown rice (I used a jasmine, red and black mix)

1. Cook the rice in 1 cup of water and set aside.
2. In a bowl, soak the dried shiitake mushrooms in 3 cups of warm water for about 20 minutes while you prepare the rest of the soup. (This will give you approximately 2 cups of mushroom water.)
3. Sauté the fresh mushrooms in a 4 quart soup pot for about 10 minutes or until they start to release their juices.
4. Add the sliced garlic and cook 1 minute.
5. Add the vinegar and cook until it is almost evaporated.
6. Meanwhile, gently squeeze extra water from the dried shiitakes and thinly slice them. Add to the pot and sauté 1 minute.
7. Add the broth and 2 cups of mushroom soak water, leaving any dark residue behind in the bowl. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer for 20 minutes.
8. Add kale and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes, or until kale is tender.
9. Add beans and rice. Bring soup to desired temperature for serving.
10. Stir in green onions and lightly cook them for a minute, or use them as a garnish.
11. Add salt if needed and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
    

Serves 6.

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Haiti still needs our help
I can't write a post without encouraging all the generous bloggers out there to make a contribution to help the people of Haiti recover from the horrendous earthquake. Here's a list of trusted places that will put your money to good use. Even a small donation will help.

The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) announces its top-rated list of charities involved in Haitian earthquake relief efforts. AIP, a leading charity watchdog that issues letter grade (A+ to F) ratings of nonprofit groups, identifies the following charities, which are providing aid to the victims that receive an “A” or “B” grade based on the portion of their budget going to program services and their fundraising efficiency. Contact the organizations below for information of specific relief operations now underway.

• Action Against Hunger (A)

• American Jewish World Service (A)

• American Red Cross (A-)

• American Refugee Committee (A)

• AmeriCares (A)

• CARE (A)

• Catholic Relief Services (A)

• Church World Service (A)

• Doctors Without Borders – USA (A)

• Habitat for Humanity International – N.O.

• International Medical Corps (A+)

• International Rescue Committee (A+)

• Lutheran World Relief (A)

• Medical Teams International (B+)

• Mennonite Central Committee (A)

• Mercy Corps (A-)

• Operation USA (A)

• Oxfam-America (A-)

• Partners in Health (A+)

• Project Concern International (A)

• Save the Children (A)

• Salvation Army (A)

• UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) (A+)

• World Concern (Program of Crista Ministries) (A)
  

• World Vision (B+)

Thanksgiving has come and gone

My plate from bottom left: stuffed, roasted seitan with mushroom gravy, salad, potato kugel, roasted veggies and figs, herbed orange-cranberry relish

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and most people have moved on, but I'm still dragging my feet about my Thanksgiving post. Please indulge me while I do a little blurb about our feast so I can move on, too. We had the whole family at our home this year which was a unique treat for us since we've not lived in the same city with all our kids in a long time. The guests brought contributions to the meal so the work was spread around a little. I got so caught up in the celebrating that I forgot to photograph some parts of the feast, like the delicious potato kugel brought by our oldest son and daughter-in-law. This is an old family recipe that came to the U.S. with my Russian great-grandmother, and appears at nearly every family holiday event. It just wouldn't be a holiday without it. I forgot to photograph the Thai coconut corn soup based on a recipe in "Vegan Express" by Nava Atlas. I love this soup, and have served it to a LOT of people. (My adapted recipe appears at the end of this post.) And I didn't photograph the mushroom gravy.

The main dish for Thanksgiving at our house is always stuffed seitan. Here you see it (uncooked) in the baking dish with the stuffing. My husband's fingers are keeping the very elastic seitan from shrinking down into the pan while I do a photo shoot. The stuffing is brown rice, wild rice, home-made-bread cubes, mushrooms, celery, shredded carrots, onions, dried cranberries, herbs and spices, and maybe other things, too.

The seitan is first rolled out and then transferred to the dish, where it's filled, and the top folded over and sealed. It's always a stressful and comical process to roll out the stretchy seitan and get it into the dish before it shrinks up, but this year I made a brilliant discovery. I rolled the seitan onto a large sheet of parchment paper, and it seemed to stick in place. My husband and I then lifted the whole thing up and placed it, paper and all, into the dish, to be stuffed. (I also added chickpea flour to the seitan mix which may have made it more pliable.)

After the stuffed seitan was baked, we lifted it out of the baking dish and onto the serving platter using the paper. It was so much easier then trying to un-stick it from the pan! I raised the seitan up a little with a spatula and slid the paper out.

In the photo above you see the vegetables — Brussels sprouts, turnips, carrots and potatoes — before they went into the oven to roast. When they were nearly done, dried figs were mixed in. I forgot to photograph the veggies after they were roasted to perfection with olive oil and herbs.

For starters, we had various raw veggies, olives, pickles, crackers, hummus and Tings. (Yes, that's right, Tings.) We also had bowls of Thai coconut corn soup. This soup takes only minutes to make but tastes like it took hours.

Here's the herbed cranberry-orange relish I blogged about recently. This time I remembered to decorate it.

This is the fabulous salad brought by our middle son and his girlfriend. It was delicious.

We had two desserts. We had almond twilles filled with pumpkin mousse. (Our mini-guest was particularly taken by the mousse and wanted more, more, more...)

And we had a pumpkin chocolate spice cake from this recipe, minus the anise (I HATE anise. Ugh.) and with only 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne. (note: The ganache from the recipe didn't work for me — there was way too much liquid and it turned into chocolate milk. Luckily I had extra chocolate on hand and made my own version of ganache using only 1/4 cup of non-dairy milk, 1 tablespoon of coconut oil and 1 tablespoon of Earth Balance.)

Because I've made several alterations to the coconut corn soup recipe, and because the original appears in several places on the Web, I'm going to share my version, here. This is the perfect soup to make when you want something that doesn't take much time or effort but tastes great.

Thai coconut corn soup (adapted from a recipe by Nava Atlas)

• 1 tablespoon light olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 to 5 scallions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
• 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into short, narrow strips
• One 15-ounce can light coconut milk
• 2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1½ cups rice milk
• One 16-ounce bag frozen corn
• 2 teaspoons good quality curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Thai red curry paste, more or less to taste
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• juice from 1/2 small lime or lemon
• ½ cup minced fresh cilantro or Italian parsley

1. Heat the oil in a small soup pot. Add the garlic, the white parts of the scallions, and the bell pepper. Sauté over medium-low heat until softened and golden, about 2 to 3 minutes.
2. Add the coconut milk, rice milk, broth, corn, curry powder, the green parts of the scallions. If using the curry paste, dissolve it in a small amount of hot soup before adding to the pot.
3. Bring to a rapid simmer, then lower the heat. Cover and simmer gently for 5 minutes. Season with salt and citrus juice, and remove from the heat.
4. Serve, with cilantro or parsley and fresh ground black pepper.

Yield: 6 servings of spicy soup.
You can substitute two cups of rice milk for the vegetable broth if desired. I've done it both ways and I like the broth version best, but both are good.

Cookies and stew

I've been collecting recipes like crazy — actually printing them out instead of just bookmarking them — but have been cooking very little. We've been eating out much more than usual, and that always seems to dampen my cooking urges. Unfortunately, we haven't been very happy with the restaurant food we've been sampling except for one place. We really enjoyed our brunch at Wayward Café, and tried to go there two other times without checking their hours, only to find it closed. You'd think all these unpleasant restaurant experiences would inspire me to cook more, but it's not happening. Maybe I'm saving my food-cooking energy for Thanksgiving, or maybe I'm just in a rut.

Last night there was nothing planned for dinner when our son and daughter-in-law extended a last minute invitation to come to their house.

Our d-i-l was making Buckwheat Stew With Tofu and Kale from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," which they had just borrowed from the library along with "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar," by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romaro. She didn't have the right kind of buckwheat so she made the stew with farrow, instead, and it was absolutely delicious — rich and satisfying. The white things that look like potato pieces are actually whole cloves of stewed garlic — soft, fragrant, and tasting like it was roasted in the oven. Kale is one of my favorite vegetables, and this recipe really showcased its winning qualities. I wish I had some right now.

For dessert we had Peanut butter oatmeal cookies from the above mentioned cookie-invasion cookbook. These were some of the best peanut butter cookies I've tasted, with excellent texture and crunch. I think I ate four. Tsk.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miserable by Gary Steiner

Have you seen this Op-Ed piece in the Sunday NY Times? It's pretty unusual to see such a blatantly unapologetic essay on the moral wrongness of killing animals for human needs, in the mainstream press. Take a look.

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Have a HAPPY and HEALTHY THANKSGIVING!

Eggplant this and eggplant that / veganmofo 2009

Roasted eggplant and garbanzo bean soup

We managed to accumulate a lot of eggplants this week - good deals at the market that we couldn't refuse. Since I seem to have a soup thing going, I decided to combine the eggplant with the soupathon and make roasted eggplant and garbanzo bean soup. I'd been wanting to make this ever since I first got my hands on Love Soup. I also wanted to try roasting an eggplant on the stove top (gas stove) like our cooking class teacher did. I mean, I've roasted peppers on the burner, but an eggplant is so much bigger.

I roasted one eggplant in the oven and one on the stove burner. And I made quite a mess on the burner. But now that I've roasted another eggplant (story below) I know what I did wrong the first time. I kind of ignored my roasting eggplant a little too long on a flame that was a little too high, and by the end I was certain I was going to set off the smoke alarm. By the time I remembered to turn the eggplant there was goo oozing out and turning to charcoal all over the burner. I got the eggplant cooked, but yuck, what a mess. I used a scrubber to VERY CAREFULLY clean the burner while it was still hot and everything came off in a snap so it turned out not to be so bad, but it can be better.

We combined the two eggplants for the soup because I was hoping to give the soup an edge of smokiness, but the soup just tasted like regular oven-roasted eggplant to me. The soup was delicious, but I could have saved myself some trouble by just using the oven.

For eggplant roasting experience number two, I played smarter. I turned the eggplant often so it would char evenly rather than get too cooked on one side and burst. The whole thing only takes about 15 minutes so there's no excuse for not sticking close by and doing it right. The flame was on the lowest simmer. The hardest part is cooking the thicker bottom but setting the eggplant upright for a couple of minutes did the trick. There was still a small spill but nothing like the first one. When the eggplant was soft, I set it in a bowl for a while to drain out the bitter fluids, and cool a bit.

The next part involved cutting it in half and scooping out the flesh, carefully retrieving all of the eggplant that was clinging to the charred skin. This was easy, easy.

Baba ghannouj

Next I used my chef knife to chop the eggplant into a purée, which I mixed with tahini, lemon juice, sea salt and finely minced garlic to end up with baba ghannouj - smoky and fabulous, just like it should be. I think this is the only way I want to have baba ghannouj from now on.

Chipotle vegetable soup / veganmofo 2009

I should call this post "Pantry Soup" because I made use of stuff from the refrigerator and pantry in an effort to move older stuff out and use up leftovers, including a container of leftover pasta sauce and the end of a bag of frozen corn. I started out wanting a simple cauliflower soup but one thing led to another, and before I was done, it was a full-blown vegetable bean soup. I quick-soaked a cup of kidney beans in eight cups of water by bringing the water to a boil then turning off the stove and letting the beans sit for an hour in the covered pot. I then cooked the beans until they were tender, adding more water as necessary. When they were soft, I added the leftover tomato sauce. I made a flavoring mix of peanut butter, miso, chipotle powder and dried crushed red pepper, and added it to the beans. The onions were caramelized by cooking slowly in a wok for about 30 minutes. After making three soups from "Love Soup" that required caramelized onions, I've become very fond of the added flavor caramelizing brings out. The veggies (except corn) were cut, and simmered with water in a separate pot (to preserve color) to tenderize them and make broth. When cooked, they were added to the beans.

The corn was added last so it wouldn't get over-cooked. I intended to add parsley at the end, but our bag of parsley was gross and unusable. So what's in your refrigerator? Maybe it's time to make soup.

I'm providing a list of ingredients but all quantities are approximate, as they should be. Remember, a tasting spoon is your most valuable piece of cooking equipment!

Vegetable and kidney bean soup
kidney beans (cup dry)
water (8+ cups for the beans, more for the veggies)
leftover tomato sauce (cup) or a can of tomatoes
onion, chopped - caramelized
cauliflower, cut up (head)
celeriac, sliced thin (chunk)
potato, large dice (1)
carrot, sliced (2 large)
frozen corn (cup)
salt to taste
peanut butter (Tbsp.)
mellow white miso (Tbsp.)
chipotle powder (tsp.)
dried crushed red pepper

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Vegetarian spiders found
Just in time for Halloween comes a nice but slightly creepy spider story. The spiders in question are (almost) vegetarian so I thought you'd want to know about them. Except for an occasional treat of ant larvae, these tropical spiders eat plant buds. Check it out. This is real - not a joke.

Love Soup by Anna Thomas

When I became a vegetarian, one of the first cookbooks I bought — maybe the first — was "The Vegetarian Epicure" by Anna Thomas. It was filled with recipes that not only I, but my omnivore friends, found delicious. It was a book that made vegetarian cooking seem almost mainstream and gourmet at a time when vegetarians were still seen as a little odd. Anna Thomas was a graduate student in film production at UCLA in 1973 when she wrote that classic book. She went on to write "The Vegetarian Epicure Book II" in 1978 and "The New Vegetarian Epicure" in 1992. In addition to writing cookbooks, Anna Thomas is a screen writer and producer. She won an Academy Award for best writing/screen play written directly for the screen for El Norte, and additional kudos for My Family/Mi Familia which she co-wrote and produced. She was also a screen writer on Frida as well as other films.

Ms. Thomas has just released a new cookbook, "Love Soup," devoted to wonderful-sounding soup recipes, and I was delighted to be offered the opportunity to review her latest effort. Although the book is described as vegetarian rather than vegan, it's "vegan friendly" in the friendliest of ways. Ms. Thomas' two sons are vegan, and she knows her way around a vegan recipe. In nearly every chapter (desserts might be an exception) the vegan recipes outnumber the vegetarian ones, and most of the non-vegan ones could easily be made vegan with the simple substitution of Earth Balance or olive oil for a bit of butter, by using a vegan garnish instead of a non-vegan one, or by substituting vegan sour cream or cheese in the few recipes using those ingredients.

The veggies from spicy Indonesian yam and peanut soup

The Book begins with lots of useful information about stocking the pantry, choosing ingredients and equipment, and measurements. It continues with a chapter on homemade broths, offering seven recipes for soup stock, all vegan, for those who like to make their own. The main soup chapters are arranged by season, to facilitate shopping at farmers' markets or using produce from your garden. There are also chapters for breads, enticing condiments and spreads to round out your meal.

I was planning to try a fall soup, but was too attracted to certain winter and summer recipes to do that. The summer soup I chose features zucchini, Yukon Gold potatoes, and fresh basil - all of which are in abundance at our farmers' market now. The second recipe, spicy Indonesian yam and peanut soup, sounded so delicious I just couldn't wait until winter. The next soup I plan to make is also a summer recipe, roasted eggplant and garbanzo bean soup. Doesn't that sound tempting?

Zucchini and potato soup

I decided to make zucchini and potato soup first, and I chose to make the puréed version because I was in the mood for a creamy soup. The author warns not to over-blend because potatoes have a tendency to become gummy when over-worked, and I under-blended at first. I didn't achieve the creaminess I was after, so I re-blended to creamy perfection. The taste was rich and delicious, and the texture lush and smooth. The soup was truly sumptuous - can't wait to make it again! I served it with an Irish soda bread. The soup took me one hour to make, start to finish.

Spicy Indonesian yam and peanut soup, simmering

My next test-recipe was spicy Indonesian yam and peanut soup. Would you believe this soup contains an entire half cup of shredded ginger? Well, it does. It's a root vegetable soup with yams, carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic, peanut butter, tamarind, lemon, and fragrant herbs and spices.

It was a little more complicated and time-consuming than the zucchini soup, but it was worth the effort. (And it wasn't hard to make.) I asked my husband what word he would use to describe the taste, and he said, "exquisite" - this is from a person who doesn't usually get beyond "very good" when describing something. The flavor was rich and complex, and I'd love to make this soup for company. In fact, there was SO MUCH soup that I was wishing we'd invited a few people for dinner. It was filling, too, and along with a salad, made a fabulous meal.

I'm looking forward to trying lots more of the soups from "Love Soup," if I can stop myself from making these two over and over! If you enjoy making soups filled with seasonal vegetables, beans, fresh herbs and condiments, you should take a look at "Love Soup."

Zucchini-spinach soup etc.

Buffy in her traveling crate

On Aug. 15 we set out for a four-day car trip from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest and we've been trying to get settled into our rental house since we arrived. I don't think this was what Buffy had in mind when I asked her if she'd like to go for a ride in the car. It's been a long time since I've written a blog post, and I've got so much to say I could write at least ten. I don't want to bore those who come to this blog for cooking ideas, so I'll try to condense and leave out as much as possible. Scenically, the most surprising part of the trip was through eastern Washington which looked just like New Mexico. When the cascade mountains formed, they cut off the moist air from this half of the state and it became much drier and sunnier than the western part. I've been told if the winter gray is really getting me down in Seattle, a two-hour trip to the eastern part of the state will provide some relief.

Being here still feels more like a vacation to me than "real life" since I no longer have a job, and my husband hasn't started his new one yet, giving us lots of free time. And our whole family is together again which means we see each other often for dinner, parties, etc., and that usually only happens during holidays.

We live near Green Lake, which is surrounded by possibly the most popular walking/running path in Seattle, and have taken advantage of that. Unfortunately I bashed my big toe on a piece of raised sidewalk the other day, and walking for pleasure and exercise has temporarily lost some of its appeal. We're also within walking distance of various shops and restaurants and have sampled some of the local offerings. Restaurant food prices are surprisingly reasonable here considering the high cost of everything else. At the local farmers market last week I saw green beans for $9/pound! I also saw them for $3 and $4 which seems like a lot compared to back home. And the regressive sales tax is a whopping 9 percent, 9.3 in restaurants.

This week we're taking care of our granddaughter full time until her new day care center opens next week. She's napping now and I thought this would be a good time to catch up with the blog. My husband took her to the zoo this morning (I didn't want to do the walk with my wrecked toe) and I used that opportunity to make a soup that I've been wanting to experiment with since before we left Madison.

Before I get to the soup I have to mention some of the food-related places we've visited recently starting with the Theo chocolate factory. We didn't plan enough ahead to get a spot on the factory tour, but we visited the storefront, and holy cacao! All you chocoholics would have been in bliss consciousness. There are displays of all the different chocolates they sell with heaps of samples in front of each one. I bought two bars and a lip balm but I think I may have eaten my weight in chocolate samples. Sorry Theo...

Ginger-sesame bowl

Thai peanut bowl

We ate at Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe twice. The menu is half raw and all vegan, and I ate raw on both visits. The first time I had a ginger sesame bowl and my husband had a Thai peanut bowl (cooked). Both were delicious. The second time I had a raw nacho plate that I mostly didn't like. The flax chips didn't have a taste and the sunflower dip was, um, gritty. The salad and mango chutney were both great but I couldn't eat much of the rest. My husband, however, enjoyed his (cooked) lentil burger.

We've also been to Sidecar - a completely vegan store that supports an animal sanctuary, and a handy little sushi spot called Kisaku. At Kisaku we had delicious edamame and very good vegetable rolls. To our surprise, the rolls came with a complimentary salad and bowl of miso soup. Too bad the soup was made with fish stock, and when I told the waitress we were vegetarian, no offer of veg soup was made. Bummer.

So about the soup I made for today's post.. I was trying to make something similar to the soup we had at a vegan meet-up dinner back in Madison, and while the two main ingredients are the same, the soup tastes very different. My son and I liked it a lot but my granddaughter was not thrilled. To be fair to the soup, I have to add that she wasn't very hungry today, and mostly dumped her food onto the floor, to the delight of the dog. I think she would have liked it more yesterday when she seemed to have the appetite of a young bear. (You can view her reaction below.) I didn't spice the soup up as much as I might have because I was planning to offer some to the babe, but I probably would have added something hot. I have to say that the soup had a very fresh taste exactly like the veggies it was made from.

Zucchini spinach soup

• 6 cups fresh zucchini, in small cubes
• small bunch fresh spinach, washed well
• 1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 - 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• juice of 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup) plus zest
• 1-1/2 cups white kidney or cannelini beans, rinsed well and drained if from a can
• 1 cup water or broth
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar (evaporated cane juice)
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon dried dill weed (to taste)
• fresh ground pepper to taste (optional)

1. Saute the zucchini and garlic in the oil in a wok or large pan until the zucchini begins to brown and soften, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the spinach, and toss to wilt, about 1 minute or less.
3. Place the vegetables, lemon juice and zest, beans, water or broth, salt*, sugar and dill in blender and blend until very smooth and creamy. (*If you are using broth, blend and taste before adding salt.)
4. Place blended soup in a pot and heat gently to desired temperature. Grind pepper over the top if desired.

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We went blackberry picking along a bike path and now I've got blackberries in the freezer.