Greens

Kale, cabbage, collards, chard, and all things leafy–if a recipe contains a leafy green, you’ll find it here.

Minty Raw Pea and Spinach Soup

March 20, 2013
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As you can see, I’m ready for spring, so ready that I made this almost florescently green soup and ate it cold. If it’s possible to will a spring into springing by eating springtime foods, this minty soup should do the trick. With sweet green peas and fragrant mint, it just tastes like spring. I [...]

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Swiss Chard with Crisp Apples

January 15, 2013
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Before I get to today’s recipe, I have some exciting news: Yesterday I was quoted in an article called “How to Go Vegan” in the New York Times Well column. I was thrilled to have the chance to share my ideas with a wider audience, and I hope that those of you who are trying [...]

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Korean-Inspired Black-eyed Peas and Kale Bowl

January 7, 2013
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I’m seven days late in saying this, but Happy New Year! Coincidentally, I’m 2 days early in wishing myself a Happy Blogging Anniversary. That’s right, on January 9 this blog will be 7 years old. I wish I had something profound to say about that, but frankly, I ran out of wise words on my [...]

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Lentil Soup with Coriander and Cumin

November 12, 2012
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Is there a word for when the wind sends the autumn leaves swirling in the driveway, orange blurring with gold, like calico cats chasing their tails? Well, there should be. Though it was unusually warm, yesterday looked like the classic fall day, leaves both bright and brown raining down, revealing the gray bones of the [...]

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Curried Chickpeas and Kale

June 11, 2012
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There’s nothing like being left alone for the weekend to make someone who “loves to cook” lose all desire to operate a stove. My husband and daughter ran off to New Orleans this past weekend, and though you’d think I would seize the opportunity to cook dishes that I like that they don’t, the ugly [...]

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Nava’s Three Potato Salad with Arugula

May 28, 2012
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Just in time for summer and all things green and leafy, Nava Atlas has a new greens cookbook out, entitled, appropriately, Wild About Greens. Before I start to rave all over this book, I must reveal my bias and tell you that this is the third cookbook that I’ve photographed for Nava. I shot the [...]

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Swiss Chard with White Beans and Job’s Tears

May 10, 2012
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I first went in search of Job’s tears a couple of years ago when a reader recommended it as a gluten-free replacement for barley. After striking out at the local natural foods store, I thought for sure I’d be able to buy some on the internet, but a Google shopping search pointed me to a [...]

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Chocolate-Cherry Ice Dream

May 3, 2012
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Warmer weather has arrived, bringing with it my craving for ice cream, which seems to go into remission over the winter but comes back with a vengeance when the temp goes over 80. I don’t own an ice cream maker, and I when I get near the vegan ice cream section of the grocery store, [...]

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Javanese-Inspired “Chicken” Soup (Vegan Soto Ayam)

February 27, 2012
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I haven’t properly been teaching my daughter to cook. Or at least that’s how I felt after reading an article in the New York Times about a mother who has her 10- and 14-year-old sons cook dinner on their own once a week. When I read the article a few weeks ago, my first, defensive [...]

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Simple Scrambled Tofu and Kale with Sweet Potato Fries

February 6, 2012
Simple Scrambled Tofu and Kale with Sweet Potato Fries

I’ve long relied on soups as a way to cram as many vegetables as I can into my family’s diet, but the truth is, my daughter prefers to eat her leafy greens mixed into one of her two favorite foods: lasagna and tofu. Lasagna will always be her first choice, but for a super-quick meal [...]

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Nava’s Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie

November 14, 2011
Nava's Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie

When Nava Atlas asked me at the beginning of last year to take the photos for Vegan Holiday Kitchen, I thought about it for about a day and then gave her an emphatic “Yes!” She warned me that she would need more photos than I’d taken for her previous book, Vegan Express–about five times as [...]

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Eat the Rainbow Black Bean Soup

October 18, 2011
Eat the Rainbow Black Bean Soup

Well, after three weeks of posting other people’s recipes, I’m back with one of my own. It was a lot of fun cooking dishes that had already gone through the testing process and learning more about cooking in general (and slow-cooking in particular) from three expert cooks. In the process of posting the reviews and [...]

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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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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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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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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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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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Cabbage “Noodle” Soup

March 8, 2011
Cabbage Noodle Soup

One of my daughter E’s favorite soups is a “Chick’n” Noodle Soup that starts with Imagine’s No-Chicken broth and includes, besides pasta, either Soy Curls or another packaged chicken substitute such as Lightlife Smart Strips.   It’s one of those dishes that feel comforting on a chilly night or whenever our spirits need a lift, so [...]

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Potato and Broccoli Rabe Casserole

March 2, 2011
Potato and Broccoli Raab Casserole

A few days ago I was in the produce department of the store I call The Frou-Frou Market when I noticed a leafy vegetable that reminded me a little of Chinese flowering cabbage.  I leaned in closer to read its label, and then recoiled with a shudder and walked away.  “Broccoli rabe.”  You see, the [...]

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Hot Skillet Salad

February 8, 2011
Hot Skillet Salad

I’m on a diet healthy eating plan.  Those of you who just stumbled on this blog are probably now looking at its name and going, “Well, duh!”  But the fact is, I never really talk about my struggles with my weight here because that’s a long and personal discussion, and my writing style is fast [...]

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Bok Choy and Baked Tofu Stir-Fry in Ginger-Citrus Sauce

September 29, 2010
Bok Choy and Tofu Stir-Fry with Ginger-Citrus Sauce

I love baby bok choy.  With its crisp, light green stalk and its leafy dark green top, it’s almost like two vegetables.  The leafy parts cook in seconds, so I always separate them from the bottom halves as I slice them and toss them in at the end of cooking to retain their bright green [...]

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Basic Low-Fat Coleslaw

August 16, 2010
Basic Low-Fat Coleslaw

There’s been a surprising development in the V family kitchen.  My daughter E has actually been asking for coleslaw, a food she used to have to be bribed to eat.  This phenomenon began after I stopped buying bagged coleslaw and starting using fresh heads of cabbage.  I could say that E likes the fresher taste [...]

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Baked Spring Rolls and Low-Fat Lo Mein

May 22, 2010
Easy Baked Spring Rolls

Instead of having two recipes for you today, I came very close to having none.  If my husband and daughter hadn’t walked in right in the middle of my culinary meltdown, tasted a couple of the misshapen spring rolls I had managed to coax out of the dried out wrappers that had been buried in [...]

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Collards Stuffed with Red Beans and Rice

April 1, 2010
Collards Stuffed with Red Beans and Rice

I have a real admiration for collards and other greens because they are survivors. Tomatoes, eggplants, and other warm-weather vegetables are delicious, of course, but they have it easy, basking in the sun all day and not being expected to withstand repeated freezes. And while Mississippi isn’t exactly known for its cold weather, this year, [...]

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Tortilla Soup with Pinto Beans

February 25, 2010
Tortilla Soup with Pinto Beans

I’m coming up for air. I’ve spent the past couple of days working on the redesign of Fatfree Vegan Recipes, the website that spawned this blog. Although the really tricky stuff like coding and css and, for all I know, nuclear particle acceleration was done by a very talented web designer at E. Webscapes, I’ve [...]

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Mushroom-Barley Soup with Cannellini Beans and Cabbage

February 3, 2010
Mushroom-Barley Soup with Cannellini Beans and Cabbage

When my friend and frequent blog commenter moonwatcher recommended Anna Thomas’ new book Love Soup, I knew I had to have it. The recipes sounded so unusual and the seasonings so much to my taste (ancho chilies, smoked paprika, toasted cumin) that I was sure it would appeal to me. Unfortunately, I often have more [...]

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Tropical Black Bean and Collard Green Soup

January 20, 2010
Tropical Black Bean and Collard Green Soup

One of my favorite ways to cook collard greens—and the best way to get my daughter to eat them—is to simmer them in soup. There’s something magical about adding a huge pile of greens to a pot, an amount so big that the lid can barely be squeezed shut, and then coming back a few [...]

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Pasta with Chard and Chickpeas

December 7, 2009
Pasta with Chard and Chickpeas

When I returned from my cruise, one of the first things my daughter said to me was, “I’m really glad you’re home, but I just wish you cooked as well as Dad!” Gee, thanks a lot. And huh??? So I asked exactly what her dad had cooked while I was gone. “Mac and Cheeze, spaghetti, [...]

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Stir-fried Tofu and Vegetables with Miso Sauce

November 2, 2009
Stir-fried Tofu and Vegetables with Miso Sauce

I don’t post a lot of stir-fry recipes because, as I’ve mentioned before, I tend to make them by feel, adding whatever amounts of vegetables and sauce feel right. Since I usually use the same basic ingredients, most of my stir-fries taste about the same. But not this one. Adding a miso-based sauce to my [...]

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Balsamic-Glazed Chickpeas and Mustard Greens

July 21, 2009
Balsamic-Glazed Chickpeas and Mustard Greens

If necessity is the mother of invention, hunger is the mother of new recipes. Well, hunger, laziness, and a sadly depleted refrigerator. On a recent Sunday, I was out of everything I would normally eat for lunch–no lettuce, no spinach, no cabbage, nothing fresh and green and salad-worthy. I was also sadly lacking the desire [...]

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Savory Swiss Chard Pie

June 1, 2009
Swiss Chard Pie

This year I got a little ambitious with my summer garden plans, and as a result, nothing’s really as it should be. By this time of year, I’m normally harvesting the first tomatoes and seeing the promising beginnings of eggplants and okra, but because I decided to try to grow heirloom varieties from seed this [...]

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Herbed Polenta with Beans and Bok Choy

March 31, 2009
Herbed Polenta with Beans and Bok Choy

When writer, speaker, and registered dietitian Jill Nussinow offered to send me a copy of her new DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes, I said yes faster than you can pressure cook a potato. I’ve been a fan of pressure cooking for years and often write here about what a time-saver [...]

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Colcannon Puffs

March 15, 2009
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With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, tonight I couldn’t resist making one more Irish-themed recipe. I had a bunch of kale in the fridge that I needed to use up, so my thoughts immediately went to colcannon, the traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale. Then a conversation about potato [...]

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Irish White Bean and Cabbage Stew

March 11, 2009
Irish White Bean and Cabbage Stew

What makes a dish Irish? Ask the average person on the street and he will probably tell you “corned beef and cabbage,” although I have it on good authority that corned beef is not a traditional Irish food. I’m certainly no expert; though I’d like to believe that at least some of my ancestors came [...]

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Red Cabbage and Peas with Cumin and Mustard Seeds

January 24, 2009
Red Cabbage and Peas

In the middle of January, the pickings get mighty slim if you’re trying to live only on fruits and vegetables that are in season. Though I’m far from being a locavore, I do try to focus my cooking around produce that’s naturally in season, not shipped from another hemisphere where the weather is the opposite [...]

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Ridiculously Easy Grilled Romaine Salad

January 13, 2009
Ridiculously Easy Grilled Romaine Salad

Call me picky but I just don’t like romaine lettuce. Something about its crunchiness (I like iceberg even less) and bitter taste just turns me off. I’ll use it in a salad if I can hide it among a lot of loose salad greens and spinach, but I just can’t eat it on its own. [...]

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Healthy Crunchy: Three Guilt-Free Snacks You Can Make at Home

August 27, 2008
Fat-Free Potato Chips

When I snack, I try to stick to fresh fruits and vegetables, but sometimes I want something with crunch, not the moist crunch of a carrot but the carb-filled crunch of a potato chip. When I get really desperate for a treat, I leave the pre-packaged snacks–with their fat, chemicals, and processed ingredients–on the grocery [...]

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Chili Mac

August 2, 2008
Chili Mac

I’ve always known that labeling recipes as Kid-Friendly is somewhat misleading; children, like adults, all have different tastes, so predicting what other children might like based on my own child’s taste (which seems to change as often as her clothes lately) is kind of presumptuous as well as silly. Still, the error of my ways [...]

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Polenta and Tofu Skillet

July 20, 2008
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When Nava Atlas wrote to me a couple of years ago and asked if I’d consider taking the photos for her new book, Vegan Express, I recognized it as a unique opportunity to expand my photography skills and have my photos published in an actual book–a chance that wasn’t likely to ever come along again. [...]

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Skillet Gardener’s Pie (Vegan Shepherd’s Pie)

May 22, 2008
Skillet Gardener's Pie

“If everyone lived on mashed potatoes, the world would be a happy place.” –EV, Food Philosopher and Potato Lover I have a confession to make, the kind of deep dark secret that I would tell only a very close friend, preferably a non-judgmental one who doesn’t cook or care about food. Here goes: For the [...]

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Spicy Collards and Black-eyed Pea Soup

May 15, 2008
Spicy Collards and Black-eyed Pea Soup

I’ve had a package of pre-washed, pre-chopped collard greens in the fridge for a few days, and I was hoping to do something different with them. But as time went on and no new recipes came to mind, I started to get afraid that they’d go bad; at the very least, they were losing nutrients [...]

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Grilled Asparagus and Spinach Salad with Smoked Paprika Dressing

May 11, 2008
Grilled Asparagus Salad

I suppose I’m going to have to refer to this as “the recipe that broke my grill pan.” To be fair, it wasn’t the recipe’s fault that the pan broke–I blame that on Emeril. A fairly new cast iron double-sided griddle, it should hold up in an earthquake, not succumb under the pressure of some [...]

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Spinach-Matzo Pie

April 24, 2008
Spinach-Matzo Pie

When I saw the Spinach and Matzo Pie recipe in this month’s Gourmet, I thought, “Wow, an easier way to make a spinach pie! No fooling with thin sheets of phyllo, just lay down some matzos instead.” I figured it’d be a snap to take my Spinach and Artichoke Pie and just substitute matzos for [...]

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Dublin Coddle with Vegan Irish Sausage

March 23, 2008
Dublin Coddle with Vegan Irish Sausages

Finding something different to make for St. Patrick’s Day isn’t easy when you’ve never been to Ireland and have no idea how authentic any of the dishes that we Americans think of as Irish actually are. I set out looking for something different from the Corned “Beef” and Cabbage I’d made last year, something that [...]

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Korean Noodle Stirfry

March 7, 2008
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I’m always saying that I love Korean food, but when I stop to think about it, what I really love is certain flavors of Korean food: kim chee, Korean barbecue sauce, and gochujang, the hot pepper paste that Koreans consider one of their three essential condiments. I’m sure there’s more to love about Korean food, [...]

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Pink Bean, Quinoa, and Spinach Soup from Vegan Express

February 13, 2008
Pink Bean, Quinoa, and Spinach Soup from Vegan Express

Just after my copy of Vegan Express, the new cookbook that features my photographs, arrived, I was paging through it looking for something quick, low-fat, and–most importantly–comprised of ingredients that I already had in my house. As it turned out, several recipes fit those criteria, but the one that leaped out at me was this [...]

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Vegetable Fried Quinoa

February 8, 2008
Vegetable Fried Quinoa

I’ve been crazy for quinoa lately; I just can’t seem to get enough of it. I’ve been adding it to soups and stews and basically any other dish that could use a grain. It’s fast and nutritious and it just plain tastes good. One night last week, I needed something healthy that I could get [...]

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Watching Your Weight? Eat Soup! (Dirty Little Secret Soup Recipe)

January 27, 2008
Eat Soup!

Green on Green Soup I love soup, especially during cold weather. In the winter, about every other meal I make centers around soup. I tend to favor thick, chunky, meal-in-a-bowl soups, primarily because I’m too lazy to make lots of different courses. But if I had all the time and energy in the world, I [...]

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Jolly Green Smoothie: A Toast to 2 years and 400 Posts

January 9, 2008
Green Smoothie

I considered letting my two-year blogging anniversary go by without mention until I noticed that this post would be number 400, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have the two mileposts occur on the same day. To toast the occasions, I’ve whipped up something delicious, healthy, and…um…green: It’s been two years, and [...]

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Thick and Hearty Split Pea Soup

December 18, 2007
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If your days are as busy and rushed as mine have been lately, perhaps you won’t mind if I give barely any introduction to this recipe. In a way, this is a soup that needs no introduction: it’s your basic, all-purpose, down-to-earth split-pea soup. This is the one I whip up when I’m serving curry-haters [...]

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Sichuan Tofu with Garlic Sauce

November 28, 2007
Sichuan Tofu and Garlic Sauce

My family had only one complaint about this meal: there wasn’t enough of it. I’d been looking for fresh water chestnuts ever since I saw the recipe for Chicken with Garlic Sauce on the food blog that has taught me the most about Chinese cooking, Barbara Fisher’s Tigers and Strawberries. According to Barbara, the recipe [...]

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North African Chickpea and Kale Soup

November 3, 2007
North African Chickpea and Kale Soup

If it seems to you like I’ve been making lots of soup lately, you’re right. Not that it’s been especially cool here, but once there’s even a hint of Fall nip in the air, I crave nothing more than a hot bowl of soup. I haven’t wanted to even glimpse a salad; give me all [...]

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Vegan Omelette for One

September 19, 2007
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I’m not a big breakfast eater. In fact, ordinarily I skip breakfast and don’t even miss it. But I’ve been trying to change my ways since finding out that people who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight than people who skip it. In addition to speeding up your metabolism, eating breakfast has also [...]

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Baked Spinach Kofta with Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce

June 22, 2007
Baked Spinach Kofta

I never buy cookbooks for the pictures, but I broke that rule a few months ago after previewing Tropical Asian Cooking. It’s nowhere near a vegan book, though there are several vegetarian or near-vegetarian recipes, but the photos were just so lovely that I had to have a copy. So I bought it and it [...]

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Spicy Grapefruit Coleslaw

May 21, 2007
Spicy Grapefruit Coleslaw

I had a problem coming up with a name for this salad. Though technically accurate, “Spicy Grapefruit Coleslaw” sounds a little bizarre. Plus, since the grapefruit and the spicy wasabi paste are both optional ingredients, you could make this and come up with a coleslaw that is neither spicy nor grapefruity, but personally I think [...]

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Palak Tofu (Tofu in Curried Spinach Sauce)

May 15, 2007
Palak Tofu

Let me take a moment to wish a belated happy Mothers’ Day to all you moms and kids. I was very lucky this year to be able to spend the day with my own mother, which happens very rarely even though we live only a few hours apart. The older I get, the more grateful [...]

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Eggplant Pancakes Florentine

May 4, 2007
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Mothers and fathers, you know how it is. You rarely get that time alone together that all couples crave. Most every night, your children are right there with you, so you have to behave yourself. You can’t break loose and do anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities or expose them to something that they’d [...]

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Collard Greens and White Bean Soup

March 27, 2007
Collards and White Bean Soup

I know someone out there is probably saying, “What, another soup that looks like grass clippings?!” I have to beg your indulgence because yes this soup does, in a way, contain grass clippings or, more precisely, garden clippings. You see, I have a small garden plot that’s filled with collard greens that need to be [...]

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Vegan Corned Beef and Cabbage, Roasted Potatoes, and Soda Bread

March 20, 2007
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Instead of St. Patrick’s Day, this year we celebrated St. Patrick’s Weekend. After being out all day Saturday, I didn’t feel up to preparing a big meal, so we waited to have our “official” holiday meal on Sunday night, when I had the time and energy to make it special. And this really was special! [...]

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Gumbo z’Herbes with Cajun Tempeh Bacon

February 28, 2007
Gumbo Z'herbes with Tempeh Bacon

Most people outside of my home state have never had this “Greens Gumbo,” but it’s an authentic Louisiana dish. Traditionally, it was made without meat to serve during Lent, but with Louisianians being the great seafood and meat lovers they are, ham and seafood eventually made their way into this naturally vegetarian soup. Well, now [...]

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Yaki-Fu Stew

February 25, 2007

This package of roasted gluten has been in my pantry ever since I bought it at the Hong Kong Market right after Thanksgiving. I’ve been searching for a way to use it but couldn’t find a mention of it in any of my Japanese or Asian cookbooks (including Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East). I [...]

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Polenta Lasagna with Portabellas and Kale

February 6, 2007
Polenta Lasagna

You know I really like a recipe when I make it two days in a row. I first made this dish for dinner last night, and though I liked it and my husband thought it was “outstanding,” I still wanted to tinker with the recipe. It was good, but I thought it could be incredible. [...]

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Rustic Red Kale and White Bean Soup

February 4, 2007
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[Just wanted to let you know that the photo that you readers chose, Kiwano, Banana, and Pineapple Sorbet, received two awards in the Does My Blog Look Good in This? competition! Thank you all for helping me to pick the right photo to enter. ] On Tuesdays, our local whole foods co-op offers members 10% [...]

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Green on Green Soup

January 21, 2007
Green on Green Soup

At the beginning of the year, I made a commitment to myself to get back to healthier eating: fewer breads and desserts and more vegetables. I especially wanted to get back into the habit of having a salad for lunch, but so far I just haven’t been able to do it. With the weather so [...]

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Italian Lentil and Vegetable Soup

December 18, 2006
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I didn’t have much time to blog this weekend, but I did spend an hour or two adding a new category to the blog’s recipe index: Readers’ Favorites. I looked back over the comments for every recipe posted since this blog began back in January and took into consideration emails that I’ve gotten from you [...]

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Rainbow Stir-Fry

December 6, 2006
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I had planned to write about a pasta dish today, but I’m under strict orders to post this recipe immediately. I don’t really mind; in fact, I’d love to use the phrase “guest post by my daughter” right now, but the truth is, E. likes to cook the food, photograph it, and eat it, but [...]

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Quick and Delicious Collards

November 28, 2006
Quick Collards

Over the holiday, we ate more unhealthy restaurant food than I care to admit, so when we got home, I was ready for a little good home-cooking. Since I didn’t have the energy to make anything fancy, I thought I’d keep it simple and unblogworthy. I had some organic collards that I’d bought before we [...]

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Ethiopian-Inspired Red Lentil Soup

November 20, 2006
Ethiopian Red Lentil Soup

I’ve been busy lately, working on several projects at once and preparing for the holidays, and I haven’t had much time to develop new recipes. So this weekend I decided to adapt an old favorite, Berberé Stew, and turn it into a lentil and vegetable soup. I’m a big fan of “meal in a bowl” [...]

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Cambodian Vegetarian Stew

October 27, 2006

I don’t remember exactly what it was that got me searching for Cambodian recipes–some restaurant menu I saw on the internet for a dish that looked good. I no longer remember anything about that recipe, but while I was searching for information that might help me recreate it, I stumbled upon this recipe and made [...]

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Yellow Split-Pea Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Kale

October 14, 2006
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I may have the only child in the world who begs for split pea soup as an after-school snack, but I’m not complaining. Yesterday I needed to cook dinner early because we were going out to dinner. To you non-vegetarians, that statement probably makes no sense at all, but the vegetarians and vegans out there [...]

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Hummus Salad

September 15, 2006
Hummus Salad with Pecan Dijon Dressing

Day 5 is finally here! It’s been a hectic week for me. Normally I do the bulk of my cooking at night so I can write about it the next morning, when I’m at my most energetic. Having to make a photogenic salad, photograph it, eat it, and then, still stuffed from lunch, write about [...]

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Taco Salad

September 14, 2006
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I mentioned before that there are two salads that I have gotten into a rut of eating all the time. Well, this is one of them (and I notice from the comments that many of you are taco salad fans too.) What you see is a bed of spinach and baby lettuces tossed with lime [...]

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Puy Lentil Salad with Roasted Beets

September 13, 2006
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If you’ve just joined us, here’s a quick recap: In an effort to find my lost salad mojo, I’m making a different salad every day for a week. The reason for the salad: A recent weight gain that I blamed on blogging but which was really caused by my lack of salad eating (and exercise). [...]

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Orange and Edamame Salad

September 12, 2006
Orange and Edamame Salad

Wow! I never dreamed I’d have such a huge response to my request for salad ideas. I made up a list and went to the grocery store this morning and bought four different kinds of lettuce (plus cabbage), four kinds of fruit (five if you count avocado), and several vegetables that I didn’t have on [...]

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Shiitake, Sweet Potato and Zucchini Foo Yung

September 5, 2006
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I’ve been interested in trying my hand at Paper Chef for a while. It’s a blogging event/contest hosted by Owen at Tomatilla! and anyone can participate. It works like this: On Friday we’re given a set of four ingredients to use and we have to come up with a dish over the weekend. I may [...]

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Inari Sushi and Kale with Mushrooms and Water Chestnuts

July 21, 2006
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Every now and then I prepare a meal that I’ve been reluctant to blog about because it’s not at all fat-free. Inari are rice-stuffed pouches made of fried tofu, and they’re very easy to make if you buy Inarizushi No Moto in a can. I’ve been working on a way to make the pouches myself, [...]

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Curried Red Lentil Soup with Dandelion Greens

June 20, 2006
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I bought a bunch of organic dandelion greens a few days ago, just because they looked interesting and the price was good. I’ve never used dandelion greens before, never even eaten them (though I have pulled a few out of the garden now and then). So I went home and started doing some research that, [...]

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Coleslaw with Poppy Seed Dressing

May 31, 2006

Yesterday I was in the mood for coleslaw for lunch. I didn’t want to use the herbed dressing I made recently or the more exotic coconut-ginger or sesame orange dressings I’ve used in the past. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I wanted it to be different. Then I remembered a recipe that [...]

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Cabbage Nori Rolls

May 7, 2006
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Here’s a recipe that proved to me that my daughter will eat anything wrapped in nori with baked tofu. Though the friend she invited to eat with us didn’t care for them (she’s not a fan of sushi either), E. couldn’t get enough of these. She must have eaten 12 of them by herself. If [...]

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Kale and Toor Dal

May 4, 2006
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As we sat down to a kid-free dinner last night, the conversation went something like this: “Hey, this is good. Really good.” (My husband, between bites.) “But it’s ugly.” (Me, tilting my head and looking at it from different angles.) “So? It tastes great.” “But it won’t look good. On the blog, I mean.” “So [...]

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Creamy Herbed Coleslaw with Grape Tomatoes

April 19, 2006
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Rather than have my usual lettuce and spinach salad for lunch today, I decided to enjoy a nice big bowl of coleslaw. And since there’s a 2-pound package of grape tomatoes on my counter (my daughter pleaded with me to buy them, saying she’d have them for snacks, but that’s a lot of snacking) I [...]

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Spinach and Artichoke Pie

April 18, 2006
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I rarely rave about a recipe, or at least I don’t think I do. But I have to rave about this one because it was quite simply the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time. (And that is including decadent deserts, too!) This was something that was both long in the planning and thrown [...]

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My Favorite Lasagna

March 24, 2006
Easy Vegan Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

Last night I had the pleasure of having dinner with a group of people taking a Civil Rights Tour through the South. The menu for the night was barbecued pork sandwiches and pork-and-beans, the idea being to give them a little taste of local cuisine (which revolves around pork, apparently). The only problem: Several of [...]

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Bean Sprouts and Broccoli Slaw Salad with Coconut-Ginger Dressing

March 20, 2006
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The dipping sauce for the Miang Kum Rolls was still on my mind yesterday morning when I needed to throw together a couple of quick dishes for a potluck lunch. I’d decided to make the Thai-Style Vegetable Curry that I’d made the very first week of this blog; we’d loved it and planned to have [...]

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Korean Tofu and Vegetable Stew

March 19, 2006

I’ve been eager to use the new bowls I got from the Korean grocery store, so I looked around the internet until I found a stew that looked perfect at Vegetarian Times. I have to admit that I hardly changed anything about this recipe, just made a few substitutions for ingredients I didn’t have. The [...]

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Miang Kum Rolls

March 18, 2006
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What do you get when you combine a Thai snack food with a Vietnamese spring roll wrapper: Miang Kum Rolls, of course! Here’s the back-story: I was thinking of making up a batch of Spring Rolls, to go with the Korean Stew I was planning for dinner last night. And I also had a craving [...]

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African Pineapple Peanut Stew

March 7, 2006
African Pineapple Peanut Stew

Several years ago, my husband and I were thumbing through Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home when my husband stopped at this recipe and said, “Let’s try this one.” I looked at it. . . and then I looked at him like he was insane. Pineapple, onions, and kale? And peanut butter? What kind of crazy [...]

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Vegan Bibimbab

February 22, 2006
Bibimbap

When I moved here from South Carolina a little over 5 years ago, I had no idea that what I would miss most would be the Korean restaurants and grocery stores available to me there. If I had known that there were no Korean restaurants anywhere near here–and only one grocery store in a town [...]

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Rainy Day Lentil Soup

February 20, 2006
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The weather has been awful lately–cold and wet. Those of you who live north of here might say I’m being a big baby, but it’s all a matter of what you get used to, and I’m not used to highs in the 40′s. I’d been happily accepting days in the 60′s and 70′s as my [...]

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Non-Traditional Sushi (Brown Rice and No-Rice Sushi)

February 9, 2006

First let me say that what follows is not traditional sushi. Perhaps I shouldn’t even call it that. For those purists out there who think that you have to use white sushi rice in order to make sushi, I officially rename this meal Interesting Stuff Wrapped in Seaweed. But for brevity’s sake, I will refer [...]

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Sesame Orange Coleslaw

February 7, 2006
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I think I have a new favorite salad! To go along with last night’s Thai Coconut Soup, I created this coleslaw, sort of a fusion of Chinese, Thai, and California (those oranges!) The little pieces of orange are explosions of sweet flavor amid the sesame-ginger seasoned dressing. I used three little clementines, but you could [...]

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What I did with those collards….

January 26, 2006

Well, I have to admit that they looked prettier in the garden, but they were pretty tasty. Since these were such young, tender greens, I decided to cook them in a non-traditional way. Not Your Mama’s Collards(or Collards and Peppers in White Wine Sauce) 1 medium onion, chopped2+ tbsp. water1 tsp. chopped garlic1/4 cup vegetable [...]

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Two Salads

January 19, 2006

Last night we ordered sushi from our favorite Japanese restaurant. Mmmm–avocado rolls, asparagus rolls, and vegetable rolls. Sushi, even sushi made only with vegetables, is ridiculously expensive, so I try to keep costs down by ordering less and making side dishes at home. Normally I make miso soup and edamame, but last night I decided [...]

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