I’m going to swap around what I’d usually have on a Friday morning for what we like on Saturday or Sunday mornings in case you need to run to the store on your way home to pick up an ingredient or two.

I confess that, on weekends one or both of us will sleep late, we’ll eat a late breakfast and then an early dinner - thus only eating two meals on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you should call me The Lazy Vegan but seriously, one must have priorities. On the mornings where I wake up early and hubby is the one sleeping in, I usually do something bad like drink a cup of coffee as my weekend treat and that kills my appetite until about 10:30, when hubby starts to stir.

Breakfast: Vegan pancakes - there are a LOT of recipes for these on the web and in every vegan cookbook out there. Some are great. Some are awful. Seriously give-them-to-the-dog awful. I’ve tried a lot of recipes and was happy with one until somebody came up with the perfect lazy Saturday morning version. I could kiss her for this: they’re the “easy weekend pancakes” from www.veganyumyum.com. OMG. Literally, put all the ingredients in a blender, mix, and pour. No messy bowls. Just the blender to clean. *squeals*

I will say that I double the recipe. My husband can put these away in a hurry, and we usually have 2 left to give to the dogs, who really love pancakes for some reason (maybe because a lot of the rotten recipes became their breakfast). Link: http://veganyumyum.com/2008/02/easy-weekend-pancakes/

Dinner: I recently tried this recipe from another great food blog. I can’t remember if Alison is vegan or not - I don’t remember ever having to come up with a substitute for an egg and I’ve not found a meat in her blog anywhere.  When I made this particular dish, my neighbor had to ask me what on earth I had made for dinner last night, because it had smelled SO GOOD. And it was very, very good.

Wine Braised Lentils are meant to be served with mashed potatoes - and Alison includes a recipe for some potatoes that sound fabulous but require something I’ve not found in my tiny store and will just have to grow for myself sometime: parsley root. If you find it, will you send me some?

Link to recipe:

http://www.alisonslunch.com/index.php/site/comments/wine_braised_lentils_with_parsley_root_potato_puree/

I forgot to mention that the minestrone soup recipe makes a LOT of soup - I’ll be freezing half of it but it makes so much we could still take that half and eat it for lunch and dinner the next two nights.

Breakfast: blueberry muffins - this is super easy to change out to a vegan recipe. You can replace eggs with a banana (the conversion is a half a banana per egg), use soymilk to replace milk and the vegan “butter.” The result is banana-blueberry muffins but totally yummy.

Lunch: spinach salad with fresh sprouts and shredded carrot: if you’ve never grown sprouts, you should totally try it. These are high in so many nutrients and are so good for you - plus they are SUPER EASY to grow. All you need is a Mason jar and some cheesecloth under the band (no lid). I used a tablespoon of alfalfa seeds - soak them overnight in about an inch of water in the jar. In the morning, dump out the water and set the jar on it’s side in a dark place (I use my kitchen cabinet), with the seeds spread out as much as possible along the side of the jar. You’ll want to rinse them off a few times every day for the next three to four days. Once the sprouts are the size you like, set the jar (on it’s side still) in a sunnier place to green them up. You can refridgerate them from there and they’ll keep for a few days.

Dinner: I’m calling it leftover night. Tomorrow night I’ll make vegan chili and cornbread - since it will be pretty cold on Friday!

Today I felt a little lazy. Maybe it was all the rain but I didn’t do a whole lot of cooking today.

Breakfast: Fruit Smoothie: 2 bananas, handful of blueberries, one apple, 8 ice cubes, soymilk to right consistency, toss all in blender until smooth.

Lunch: leftover Tomato Rice and Eggplant mixture

Dinner: Asti-style Minestrone (from Pasta & More, Time-Life Books)

1.5 cups red kidney beans; 1/2 small savoy cabbage; 2 medium potatoes, 2 carrots, diced; 2 celery stalks, sliced; 1 cup rice; 1 clove garlic, minced; 2 tbs parsley, minced; salt & pepper to taste; 4 tbs grated parmesan “cheese” (otional)

Put the beans in a large pot, and cover with cold watr to about 2 inches above the top of the beans. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes. Cut the cabbage in 1/4in thick strips, discarding the core. Add the cabbage, potatoes, carrots and celery to the pot, stir, and cook for 30 minutes more. If needed, add a little more water, though the soup should be quite thick. Add the rice and after 15 minutes, add the garlic, parsley. Taste for salt and pepper. Turn off heat and let minestrone stand for a few minutes while the rice finishes cooking. Serve with the “cheese” separately, if using.

Dinner at my house is often an experiment. Usually one thing or another is a leftover item that didn’t get eaten the first time around, such as last night’s baked eggplant. Or, I’m just experimenting. I like to play around with recipes from my French or Italian cookbooks - the results never look as fabulous as the photos in the book — however I never said I was a gourmet chef. I just play around in the kitchen and sometimes dinner is great, and sometimes even the dogs won’t eat it (that hasn’t happened in years, though)

Breakfast: Banana bread (recipe below) and green tea sweetened with Stevia

Lunch: Leftover pasta w/tomatoes & garlic on top, and some of the roasted veggies

Dinner: Rice with sundried tomatoes, onions and the leftover eggplant from last night (recipe below) with creamed spinach

Vegan Banana Bread (makes one loaf)

I really have no idea where I stumbed on this recipe. I know I changed it a little bit (I change everything) but this is one soft, sweet, moist bread.

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup “butter”

3 overripe bananas, mashed thoroughly

2 cups flour (I usually create a mix of ground flaxseed, soft white and hard red wheat)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup soymilk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Toss all in mixer, stir for several minutes, then spread into a greased breadpan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Remove from pan immediately and let cool on wire rack.

Rice with Sundried Tomatoes, Onions and Balsamic Eggplant (leftover)

I used brown rice but I am sure Arborio would have been a much better choice. However, risotto is a lot of work with all the stirring, and I was feeling lazy tonight.

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 red onion, chopped

2 tbs olive oil

1 cup rice

1/3 cup sundried tomatoes

splash of red wine

2 cups veggie stock

Sautee onions in saucepan with olive oil. Meanwhile, chop the garlic and sundried tomatoes in a food processor. I made my own sundried tomatoes this summer, they’re a little tough so I had to add a little olive oil to them for a few minutes to make them soft enough to chop. Once the onion was soft, I added the garlic and tomatoes and the rice, stirred it to coat with the oil for about 2 minutes. Add broth, cover, and let simmer for one hour. After the rice was nearly finished I added the eggplant leftovers. With the balsamic vinegar in the eggplant, I didn’t feel the need to add any salt.

Creamed Spinach:

1 pound baby spinach, rinsed

3 cloves garlic, minced

pat of vegan “butter”

4 oz mozarella “cheese”

1/4 cup soymilk

Sautee spinach in the butter over medium heat until fully wilted (about 3 minutes). Puree in a food processor or blender, return to saucepan with all other ingredients over low heat - stir until all is evenly warm and creamy.

When I first went vegan, I swear I thought I was going to starve to death. I’d thought I was all set to start, thanks to a vegan cookbook and a handful of recipes to try. I’d bought cashews and peanuts to have on hand for the munchies, a fridge full of veggies and tofu, and went for it.

Most of the recipes were terrible. I’d say a number of things on the list of ingredients in some of the recipes I’d never heard of. A lot of recipes asked for weird things like seitian and tofu - which is completely bland and tasteless until you learn how to freeze it, squeeze it, and marinate it.

Seriously, I lost lots of weight in the first few weeks - but mostly because I was STARVING.

If anyone wants to try switching to vegan, I thought I’d make their life easier. For the next 30 days I’ll post what I cooked/ate for each meal, and the recipes for them. It will also hold me accountable to eating 3 meals a day - many times I tend to skip breakfast or lunch, which isn’t exactly good for you.

Monday Jan 5:

Breakfast - bowl of oatmeal

Lunch - simple spinach salad - baby spinach, raisins and a little shredded carrot

Dinner - roasted veggies and pasta with roasted garlic and eggplant

Oven roasted veggies are super easy, and super yummy. I make a large pan of them because I’ll eat them for days. Basically, chop up potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, onions and carrots - and any other veggie you might have on hand that would be good this way - put them in a glass baking dish, toss them all with a little olive oil and maybe some herbs of your choice (I used basil this time, rosemary is a favorite) and bake at 400 for an hour.

I loved the roasted garlic and the diced tomatoes over the pasta, that was absolutely great. The eggplant recipe was a bit of an experiment. Personally, I’d keep the recipe on the eggplant side but cut back on the balsamic vinegar, maybe water it down, and serve it with some sauteed spinach or some other yummy green. Recipe for that is here:

http://southernfood.about.com/od/eggplantrecipes/r/bl00810k.htm

You can substitute rice cheese (or soy cheese, though i have found the rice stuff melts better) for the parmesan, and veggie boullion works well to replace beef or chicken broth/boullion. If using boullion instead of veggie broth: don’t add salt until you’ve tasted the dish! Many times I’ve found the salt in the boullion is plenty fo the dish.

Enjoy!

When I first went vegan, I swear I thought I was going to starve to death. I’d thought I was all set to start, thanks to a vegan cookbook and a handful of recipes to try. I’d bought cashews and peanuts to have on hand for the munchies, a fridge full of veggies and tofu, and went for it.

Most of the recipes were terrible. I’d say a number of things on the list of ingredients in some of the recipes I’d never heard of. A lot of recipes asked for weird things like seitian and tofu - which is completely bland and tasteless until you learn how to freeze it, squeeze it, and marinate it.

Seriously, I lost lots of weight in the first few weeks - but mostly because I was STARVING.

If anyone wants to try switching to vegan, I thought I’d make their life easier. For the next 30 days I’ll post what I cooked/ate for each meal, and the recipes for them. It will also hold me accountable to eating 3 meals a day - many times I tend to skip breakfast or lunch, which isn’t exactly good for you.

Monday Jan 5:

Breakfast - bowl of oatmeal

Lunch - simple spinach salad - baby spinach, raisins and a little shredded carrot

Dinner - roasted veggies and pasta with roasted garlic and eggplant

Oven roasted veggies are super easy, and super yummy. I make a large pan of them because I’ll eat them for days. Basically, chop up potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, onions and carrots - and any other veggie you might have on hand that would be good this way - put them in a glass baking dish, toss them all with a little olive oil and maybe some herbs of your choice (I used basil this time, rosemary is a favorite) and bake at 400 for an hour.

I loved the roasted garlic and the diced tomatoes over the pasta, that was absolutely great. The eggplant recipe was a bit of an experiment. Personally, I’d keep the recipe on the eggplant side but cut back on the balsamic vinegar, maybe water it down, and serve it with some sauteed spinach or some other yummy green. Recipe for that is here:

http://southernfood.about.com/od/eggplantrecipes/r/bl00810k.htm

You can substitute rice cheese (or soy cheese, though i have found the rice stuff melts better) for the parmesan, and veggie boullion works well to replace beef or chicken broth/boullion. If using boullion instead of veggie broth: don’t add salt until you’ve tasted the dish! Many times I’ve found the salt in the boullion is plenty fo the dish.

Enjoy!

I’m skimming the news this morning, and the first big story on www.time.com is this one: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1839995,00.html  — in short, the media is once again telling the world about how the methane in cow farts (ok, they said flatulence, but “farts” sound far less serious) have 23 times the warming impact of CO2, and cow waste has 296 times the warming effect of CO2. And of course, the article goes on and on about how everyone should convert to vegetarianism.

Unfortunately to my mind, all these articles just add up to nagging. Nagnagnagnagnagnagnag…. This one is more naggy than the others and it does so by talking about how meat clogs arteries and causes an increase in heart disease and stroke. I think most people will put their fingers in their ears and say “lalalalalala” at the top of their lungs.

However much I’d like for there to be more vegetarians and vegans in the world (hey look, more options on a menu!), at the moment we are considered “weird fringe people” - there’s this negative bias. Some of the bias is well-deserved, since many vegans go around saying how awful it is to be eating Bambi or Chicken Little when their lives were torture. Who wants to be lumped in with that crowd?

Another issue is harder: we Americans like to keep up with the Joneses, and since meat is expensive, it shows you have the money to spend. It’s also deeply set in our food culture - what’s a summer barbeque without hamburgers and drumsticks? Or Thanksgiving turkeys, or Christmas ham, or any birthday t-bone? Further, will many Americans feel deprived because their meals no longer contain meat?

I can tell you from experience, it takes a while to adjust to a vegetarian diet. Meat, especially red meat and pork, lends a lot of flavor to something as simple as rice, and finding out what makes rice and veggies palatable without meat takes time. I’ll admit, sometimes when making one of our favorite Italian dishes, I wish I could toss in a little pork for that flavor - though now I bet I would think it too salty. Your taste buds change. In a way I think they improve and can pick out more flavors from veggies than they could before - soups I once considered bland I really enjoy now.

Back to my point, in asking people to go vegetarian, the media is asking for a major lifestyle change, and a mindset change. They are asking our culture to change. That won’t happen overnight, especially since most Americans are pretty selfish (yep, me too, even though I have a good bike now I still don’t want to ride three miles up a mountain and I take the car to work) and we are slow to change.

Until vegetarian options show up on more menus, until there are more recipes for vegans and vegetarians in magazines and rags than there are meat-based recipes, until there are more of us and we aren’t part of the fringe but rather a group of people who care more about our health and the planet’s health, life isn’t going to change.

But of course, if you DO want to try some great vegan recipes, check this girl out! www.veganyumyum.com - without her I would have starved to death while trying to find good vegan meals!

Early this morning, in a sleepless state caused by reading a 956 page novel in 30 hours, I read an amusing blog post by my friend talking about the typical response vegans/vegetarians get when the non-vegetarian we’re talking to finds out about our meat and/or dairy aversion. She is quite right, that the response is usually one of two: “Oh I could never give up my big steaks” or a confused expression of “What do you eat?”

First of all, I personally don’t expect people to give up their meat. I’m not the “holier than thou” type. It was after I made the conversion that I learned more about how cruelly we treat the animals we intend to eat, and now I really cannot think of eating an animal whose life was purely torture. A wild caught fish is ok, but a chicken that lived a life of disease, inhaling air poisonously heavy with ammonia from all the droppings that are never cleaned up, fed a diet that made it grow far faster than nature intended so that its heart likely was too small to support it adequately, then grabbed and shoved roughly in a crate with dozens of other birds to go to slaughter… no, I cannot bring myself to eat a chicken that comes from a neat, styrofoam package.

But I don’t condemn those who do, or those who are unaware of our cruel system. Most people are truly empathic to animals, and if they knew how the dinner on their plate had lived, probably wouldn’t eat it. At least I like to think so.

The other reaction – the ‘what do you eat’ question - amuses me to no end – it’s so easy to reply with “fruits and veggies…(duh)”, but I understand it too.

It is hard to think of a food in our American diet that does not require some meat. We humans are creatures of habit - most of us have about 10 recipes/meals that we rotate out on a regular basis, and I’m willing to bet that for most folks, all ten of them require some form of meat. Pull out your favorite magazine that includes a few recipes, and see if even one of them could be vegetarian, let alone vegan (no dairy/animal products). Meat is part of our culture, it’s hard to do anything different.

Just a month. That’s all I had in mind when I went vegan. Thirty days of avoiding meat and dairy - it was a culinary challenge as well as a quest for better health. I’d read so much about people feeling better and I thought it might be bullhockey, but I wouldn’t know unless I tried it. My first few weeks were terrible. It was so hard to think of new things to eat, and I was trying tofu and seitian and all these “vegan” foods and recipes from a highly touted vegan cookbook that were truthfully terrible. I was hungry all the time, because I wasn’t used to how fast the body goes through veggies and it honestly took me forever to come up with something to eat next. A container of cashews was a total lifesaver for me in those first weeks. I lost weight, almost alarmingly quickly, and I wasn’t heavy to start with.

Then the benefits started to make themselves known. My fingers and hips stopped aching. I was sleeping better - my insomnia disappeared. I had more energy. My headaches went away - I was accustomed to getting three or four per week. I had never thought of these things as symptoms of a problem, they were minor annoyances, a part of daily life. Everybody has headaches, lots of people have aches and pains, even young people.

After my 30 days were up, I never looked back. I’ve cheated from time to time, and I do regret it. I’ve cut way back on sugar even, after noticing that after I’ve had all that chocolate cake I really do feel like crap. I’ve mostly given up coffee, because I no longer like how it makes me feel for two days afterward (though it’s hard, and I do give in, and regret it, at least once a month).

I can sit here and tell you all the current fad reasons to be vegetarian. The headlines are full lately. Go Veg! It saves greenhouse gases to eat even ONE vegetarian meal per week! … Eat local! It saves even more carbon emissions!… Reduce your footprint! Here’s a few recipes!

For me, even though on the surface it makes me a bigger treehugger and has made my footprint small according to all those “carbon calculators” that are sprouting up all over the net, my reasons are purely selfish. All the rest – a clearer conscience, a reduced footprint, supporting smaller local farms, saving money – is merely a side benefit.

Kind of like how I prefer to hang laundry on the line. It isn’t entirely to be a greenie, but because I love it so.

A few weeks ago I bought a used dehydrator for veggies and such. After reading through the book that came with it, I must say I am so excited to have this thing! I was initially only thinking of drying tomatoes and all kinds of herbs with it, but did you know, I can make “fruit leathers” (like Fruit Roll-Ups) too? As I read, I kept getting more excited. I can make crackers. Trail mix. Dry all my herbs with no fears of mold or mildew. My own energy bars for my 40+ mile bike rides…

This thing is going to get some serious use.

So on to Expriment In Drying #1: “Sun” Dried Tomatoes.

I have all kinds of great Roma tomatoes coming in, some larger on certain plants than others. A few plants have consistently been producing fruit that isn’t much larger than a cherry tomato – perfect for slicing in half on a salad, or for drying. So as hubby and I got dinner in the oven, I set to cleaning and slicing up several dozen tomatoes. I ran the machine for about 10 hours. If course, you do have to flip the screens, and the fruit, about halfway through to ensure even drying, which involved me getting up at 3am to fulfill this task. If I were smarter, maybe I’d pick a day I was at home and do this during normal waking hours, hmmm?

Not all of them were perfectly done though. The ones that were nice and crispy-rubbery dry I put into a bag. The others were really close to being finished but not quite – those I put in a jar with olive oil, some salt, some vinegar, and some herbs and put in the refrigerator. They should be really good in a few days in some pasta. I don’t want to keep them very long out of fear of Botulism or something awful like that.

Sun Dried Tomatoes #2

This time I sprinkled some salt, garlic powder and oregano on the tomato slices before drying. They smelled fabulous, my whole house smelled like good Italian food for hours. The results did not disappoint either… WOW are they good! Hard to not sit there and snack on them like a bag of potato chips. Then again, why not?

I apologize for talking about something twice so soon after the first instance. BUT, I had a great thing happen. I took my blueberry jam to my friends at the organic bakery. They tried it and loved it so much they want me to make it for them to sell. But here’s the catch: pectin isn’t necessarily organic. I needed to find a way to make the jam without it (or with a natural source of it).

Being that I don’t like being dependent on buying a product just so I can make something and save a few bucks, I was game to try and figure this out too.

Apples naturally contain pectin. In fact, the original sources of pectin were from apple juicing factories back in the 1920s. The pulpy mess that’s left after the apples were pressed was perfect for use as pectin, and sold to pectin-making factories which used to somehow distill it into a liquid form for sale.

So for my first effort, I mixed in half apples, half blueberries as follows below. The results were very pleasant, this is a less sweet jam though you can easily add more sugar if you so desire. I’ve found the general rule of thumb is 3/4 to 1 cup sugar per cup crushed fruit (I have seen almost double that in some recipes, but I think that would be way too sweet & you might wind up with blueberry syrup instead).

Blueberry-Apple Jam

4 c. finely chopped, peeled apples
2 c. water
4 c. fresh or frozen blueberries
3 3/4 c. sugar

In a 4-6 quart kettle, mix apples and water; simmer uncovered until apples are soft — 15 to 20 minutes. Mash if necessary. Stir in berries. Simmer uncovered 5 minutes. Stir in sugar. Bring to a rolling boil. Boil until jam sheets off a metal spoon — 5 to 6 minutes. Pour into hot, clean jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe edge with a damp cloth.

After that, I thought I would try with just blueberries, a really simple sort of mixture, and see what would happen if I just boiled the berries down for a long time. Surely they’d become less watery over time. This did work, the jam is delicious, and with the long boiling time a lot of the skins broke down and so it’s almost a jelly than a jam. I wound up boiling for 50 minutes - and found out the hard way you cannot ignore the pot for a minute and try to empty the dishwasher at the same time. I had it boil over in what seemed a split second - talk about a MESS as it went down the front of my stove and into a puddle on the floor.

Blueberry Jam

8 cups blueberries

8 cups sugar

2 cups water

Demolish blueberries in food processor, then measure. Add water, boil. Add sugar, and boil almost to jelling point. Pour boiling hot into jars and seal.

I take the jams to the bakery tomorrow to see which they prefer - I’ll let you know what happens! And then I promise, no more blueberry posts for a while.

The front of my stove is still stained, by the way. I’ve tried baking soda and vinegar and lemon, but that blue streak is still there. Anybody have any ideas on how to get that out?