Category: food

The key to remember, if you or your child is going to be a vegetarian, there are healthy ways to go about it.

“There are three major steps to do this vegetarian thing right,” Blatner said. “The first step is to replace the meats with plant proteins. So that would be eating things like beans nuts, seeds. Step two is eat lots more fruits and vegetables and then step three is replacing your grains with more whole grains.”

Yeah, that came out of the mouth of a registered dietitian. What are they teaching those people? So, if you eat meat you don’t need lots of fruits, veggies and whole grains? I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that she said that all people should be eating  lots of fruit, veggies and whole grains and that it just got cut from the story. Check out the video with the story. The parents have big hunk of meat, a baked potato and a small pile of broccoli mixed with something. Fabulously healthy meal, that is. Not.

I’ve been lazy about posting food pics. Before any more pile up, let me toss ’em on up here. These peanut butter oatmeal cookies from Vegan With A Vengeance rock. I made some as a congratulations present for a friend and then was left with more than I was comfortable having in the house. So I took them to a work meeting and they were gobbled down. Then I told everyone they’re vegan. Heh. See? Not all grass and twigs.

Here’s the Tofu Scramble from Vegan With A Vengeance, Mexican style, about a half cup of salsa stirred in at the end. With it is leftover Green Mexican Rice (yeah, not very green) from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure that I took to a potluck. It ended up being a little dry. I have other similar recipes that aren’t done in the pressure cooker and I think they’d probably work better.

I’m still powering my way through Vegan Italiano. This is the Cannellini Beans with Grilled Radicchio, except those are navy beans instead of cannellini. I don’t think it makes much of a difference. Another winner from this cookbook. I’ve been all about stews and beans lately. They go nicely with cold weather. I seem to be in some sort of cooking grove lately. Eating out has been pretty rare lately. Soul Veg is probably worried about me.

The recipes in Vegan Italiano so far seem to be pretty easy. Maybe that’s just the ones I’ve picked to cook. Still I think this is a good cookbook for begining to intermediate cooks.

This is the Winter Vegetable Stew. What a great way to use cabbage. If you’re looking to save some money, this is a really inexpensive, tasty dish. Everything comes out infused with classic Italian flavors. I usually think of a stew being a little more juicy. Concerned that this would start to stick to the pot, I ended up adding about 1/2 cup of water early on. That seems to have been the right amount. The flavor didn’t seem to suffer.

Later in the week I made the Rotelle with Fennel and Cherry Tomatoes. This is a great “I don’t feel like cooking” dish. Especially if you use canned cherry tomatoes as I did…DeKalb Farmers Market carries a brand that is really tasty. There is very little chopping involved and only 1 pot. It’s done in about 20 minutes. And I love fennel so I’m always happy to have another way to use it. I know, these aren’t rotelle. I got these mezzi rigatoni instead.