Hearty One-Pot Meal Miso Soup

September 19, 2011
Hearty Miso Soup

Usually I serve miso soup as part of our “sushi meal.” I make or buy vegetable sushi rolls, cook some edamame, toss some green leafies with some tahini dressing, and make a simple miso soup. On a recent rushed weeknight, I decided to skip all the separate dishes and just throw everything into the soup.

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Thai Salad with Slow-Cooked Tofu in Pineapple Barbecue Sauce

September 12, 2011
Thai Barbecue Salad

One of the highlights of my trip to Portland happened after Vida Vegan Con was over. That Sunday night, I got to meet my friend and long-time reader Maria, whom many of you know from the comments as Moonwatcher. Maria traveled ten hours to visit her son in Portland and timed her trip so that [...]

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Cherry Snack Cake and a Non-Recap of Vida Vegan Con

September 2, 2011
Cherry Snack Cake

Overwhelming. When people ask me how Vida Vegan Con was, the first word that comes to mind is “overwhelming.” Imagine a room filled with over 200 people who, at first glance, seem to be total strangers but who over and over, one by one, are revealed to be people you know, whose lives and words [...]

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Skillet Eggplant and Lentils with Almond Parmesan

August 25, 2011
Skillet Eggplant and Lentils

I’m packing my bags and getting ready to fly to Portland early tomorrow morning for Vida Vegan Con, the largest gathering of vegan bloggers ever to invade a conference center. I’m so excited to get to teach a photography workshop with two of my idols, Isa and Hannah, and to sit on a panel of [...]

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Kale Mallung (Sri Lankan Kale with Coconut)

August 17, 2011
Kale Mallung

On vacation this summer, my family and I had the pleasure of eating at Source, a vegetarian restaurant that opened in San Francisco earlier this year. The entire meal was delicious: E had the lasagna, of course, and I had a chickpea-stuffed rice pastry called Borek. But the the stand-out was the special of the [...]

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Low-Fat Tahini-Chickpea Dressing

August 8, 2011
Low-Fat Tahini-Chickpea Salad Dressing

Today’s recipe is brought to you by the letter D… not D for “dressing” but D as in my husband D, who can’t get enough of this dressing. He’s been pouring it on salads and drizzling it on sandwiches ever since I made it for the first time (we’re now on our second batch). I [...]

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Cashew Carrot Salad

July 31, 2011
Cashew Carrot Salad

I’ve discovered a salad that my daughter will gobble up like candy. In fact, she eats so much of it that she’s almost in danger of turning orange! I’m talking, of course, about good, old-fashioned carrot salad–but with a few updates and improvements.

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Homestyle Green Beans and Potatoes

July 18, 2011
Homestyle Green Beans and Potatoes

I know that after my recent talk about all the San Francisco restaurants where we dined on our vacation, some of you expected me to come back with ideas for fancy, cutting-edge dishes. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but here I am with something so un-trendy, so uncool, that most bloggers would be afraid to [...]

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Waterfalls and Crutches and Bears, Oh My! — Our California Vacation

July 14, 2011
Crutches in San Francisco

On the second day of our summer vacation, our daughter E fell and broke her foot while hiking on a rocky trail in a remote part of Sequoia National Park.  We were about half a mile away from the trail head on our way back, and we hadn’t seen one other person on the trail [...]

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Chili-Stuffed Peppers

June 30, 2011
Chili-Stuffed Peppers

My husband’s been suggesting for years that I stuff some bell peppers, and he always wondered why I would roll my eyes and tell him he could stuff them himself. The truth came out over dinner the other night. It turns out that both of our mothers made stuffed peppers, but while D remembered them [...]

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Ridiculously Easy Southwestern Coleslaw

June 23, 2011
Ridiculously Easy Southwestern Coleslaw

My daughter hated it. My husband described it as “different from any coleslaw I’ve ever tasted.” And I agreed with my husband. So why am I posting it here? Simple: I like odd coleslaws, and this one is odd but interesting. Light yet spicy, this lime and cumin-infused salad is the perfect accompaniment to burritos, [...]

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Pesto Primavera Pasta and Other Fresh Basil Recipes

June 17, 2011
Pesto Pasta Primavera

Every summer, our small back patio turns into a miniature basil farm with large pots of the fragrant herb filling every available inch. As soon as the plants shoot up a few inches, I start snipping off their leaves and adding them to just about everything I make. By this time, mid-June, the plants are [...]

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Vegan Zucchini Frittata

June 7, 2011
Zucchini Frittata

When I was living on my own for the first time, a friend’s mom gave me a battered, 1960′s edition of The Joy of Cooking, and for the next year I taught myself to cook by following its often dated but always instructive recipes. I was particularly fascinated by the chapter called “Eggs, Souffles and [...]

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Watermelon Rind Preserves

June 2, 2011
Watermelon Rind Preserves

Last weekend, E and I took a train down to Louisiana for a quick, two-night visit to my parents’ house in the country. We were eating a surprisingly sweet watermelon for lunch on Saturday when my father noticed it had something he hadn’t seen in a long time: a thick rind. It seems that watermelons [...]

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Cosmic Cashew Kale and Chickpeas with Confetti Quinoa

May 27, 2011
Cosmic Cashew Kale and Chickpeas with Confetti Quinoa

My daughter E graduated from middle school on Monday, so she’s officially a high schooler now. Yes, a high schooler. Those of you who picture her as she appeared in her first photo on this blog can perhaps appreciate how strange it feels to look at her and see both that nine-year-old girl and the [...]

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Ridiculously Easy Curry-Scrambled Tofu

May 19, 2011
Ridiculously Easy Curry-Scrambled Tofu

For years, the only scrambled tofu I ever made required a seasoning packet called Tofu Scrambler. I loved that product. It had just the right blend of seasonings and thickeners to conjure some magical response out of the blandness that is bean curd and turn it into what I considered the perfect breakfast. The idea [...]

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Green Curry Tofu Cakes

May 9, 2011
Green Curry Tofu Cakes

If you made my last recipe, I know you have a jar of Thai green curry paste somewhere in your fridge, although you could have done the wise thing and stored it in your freezer. But, if you’re like me, you always believe you’re going to be using it right away, so you keep it [...]

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Thai Green Curry with Vegetables and Tofu

April 28, 2011
Thai Green Curry with Vegetables and Tofu

I’m not one of those food snobs who think that absolutely everything I cook has to be made from scratch. Though I believe that the results are usually better (and more nutritious) when all the ingredients are homemade, I’m not above using packaged ingredients, such as vegetable broth or canned beans, when the ingredients aren’t [...]

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Simple Cabbage and Chickpea Soup with Fresh Basil

April 21, 2011
Cabbage Chickpea Soup

The day after her 14th birthday, my daughter E leaned against the door to my office and said, “Let’s go on a diet together.” I was stunned into babbling: “You do not need to go on a diet. You’re a size 0. If you get any smaller, you’ll cease to exist.” “I know. I don’t [...]

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White Bean Salad with Za’atar

April 12, 2011
White Bean Salad with Zatar

Chickpea salads are very popular in my household. My daughter E likes them so much that she often helps me throw them together, and we never use exactly the same formula twice. Over the weekend, I decided to really shake things up and, instead of chickpeas, make a bean salad from great northern beans. I [...]

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