Holiday Recipes

From New Years’ Day to Independence Day to Christmas, these special recipes will brighten any holiday.

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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Black-eyed Peas and Greens for a Healthy New Year

December 30, 2012
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Black-eyed peas and greens are the traditional New Year’s Day meal in the South. Supposedly, the peas bring you good luck and the greens bring you money in the coming year. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, I think it’s a great tradition because beans and greens are about the healthiest thing [...]

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Applesauce Ginger Cake with Maple Glaze

December 21, 2012
Applesauce Ginger Cake with Maple Glaze

Imagine biting into this moist and tender cake. First you breathe in the aroma of cinnamon, and as you take your first bite, you savor the warm flavor of ginger. And then, just when you think you’ve figured out all the secrets of this sweet delight, you bite into a hidden nugget of candied ginger [...]

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Two Healthy Vegan Nogs: Chia Nog and Banana Nog

December 9, 2012
Chia Nog

I’m certain that if we didn’t have a kid in the house, my husband and I would never put up a Christmas tree or take the time to stake out the herd of electric reindeer that blazes across our front yard every December. But when you’re a small family, the youngest member sets the traditions, [...]

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Vegan Southern-Style Cornbread Dressing

November 19, 2012
Southern-Style Cornbread Dressing

I recently realized that I’ve never posted the one dish that we had every Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was growing up–Cornbread Dressing. That’s mainly because I’ve always counted on my mother to make it. Even after I became vegetarian, my mother would set aside part of the dressing before she added the giblets or [...]

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Mary McDougall’s Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

October 17, 2012
Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

The first time I made these muffins, I was worried because they contain molasses and I thought I didn’t like molasses. Wrong! I love molasses in these delectable pumpkin muffins. It gives them a dark richness and amplifies the spiciness of the cinnamon and nutmeg. The second time I made them, I was confident that [...]

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Dreena’s No-fu Love Loaf

April 26, 2012
Dreena's No-fu Love Loaf

I’ve been looking for a great lentil loaf recipe, and finally I’ve found one! Unfortunately, I can’t claim credit for this delicious dish. That goes to Dreena Burton and her new book, Let Them Eat Vegan!: 200 Deliciously Satisfying Plant-Powered Recipes for the Whole Family. Fortunately, Dreena and her publishers have given me permission to [...]

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Strawberry Mini Muffins

April 5, 2012
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Easter is a few days away, and if you’re as concerned as I am about the amount of sugar your children are eating, you may be looking for healthy alternatives to the jelly beans and vegan chocolate the Easter Bunny usually leaves (at least that’s what he usually deposits in my daughter’s basket). These tiny [...]

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Vegan Sausage and Mushroom Etoufee

February 20, 2012
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I’m writing this from a hotel on St. Charles Avenue after a night of revelry in the streets of New Orleans. If you’ve never been to Mardi Gras, you might assume that the partying is confined to Fat Tuesday itself, but Mardi Gras day is just the culmination of all the parties and parades that [...]

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Seitan Stuffed with Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Mushrooms

December 13, 2011
Seitan Stuffed with Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Mushrooms

This is A Tale of Two Seitans. For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to make something a little fancier than the baked tofu my husband, daughter, and I usually enjoy while our omnivorous extended family is eating turkey. The day before the big feast, I took one of my old favorite stuffings, wrapped wheat gluten [...]

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Ginger-Orange Glazed Carrots

December 5, 2011
Ginger-Orange Glazed Carrots

As a lazy cook who values one-pot meals, I don’t cook many side dishes. If a meal lacks a vegetable, I’ll usually toss together a salad and call it a day. The only time I find I need true side dishes is when dinner centers around a protein-heavy dish, like mini tofu quiches, quinoa cutlets, [...]

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Creamy Vegan Broccoli and Rice Casserole

November 21, 2011
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Thanksgiving is just three days away, and I don’t know where all my time went. Well, actually, I do know how I used some of it: making this casserole, twice, to get it just right so that if you decide to include it in your holiday meal, you can be sure it will work. And [...]

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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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Ethiopian-Spiced Pumpkin Bisque

November 8, 2011
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I can’t pass up a pumpkin. As soon as I see winter squash laid out in rows at our local produce stand, I have to stop and buy many more than we’ll actually eat. My daughter will insist that we pick up a pie pumpkin or two, while I’m drawn to the less traditional ones: [...]

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Chocolate-Almond Nuggets of Joy

November 1, 2011
Halloween Joy

I didn’t intend to post a recipe today, but my daughter and I had so much fun making these natural “Fauxmond Joy” candies that I couldn’t resist sharing them with you. The photos are Halloweenish because yesterday was Halloween (I’m always behind the times), but the treats are good any time of the year. Before [...]

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Gluten-Free King Cake Cookies (Cinnamon-Pecan Cookies)

January 20, 2011
Gluten-Free King Cake Cookies (Cinnamon-Pecan Cookies)

Mardi Gras season officially began on January 6, and though the parades don’t start to roll in New Orleans until mid-February, I already have Mardi Gras–or more specifically King Cake–on my mind.  I haven’t had a piece of King Cake in years, but that doesn’t stop me from craving the sugar-laden, gaudy confection.  Even more [...]

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Apple-Cranberry Strudel Pie

December 8, 2010
Apple-Cranberry Strudel Pie

I have two modes of recipe development: carefree, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants and methodically planned.  When I’m working with everyday ingredients that I know are hard to mess up, I’m likely to get into the kitchen with only a vague idea of what I expect the final outcome to be and add seasonings and ingredients on instinct; most [...]

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Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf

November 17, 2010
Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf

This is not your mama’s meatloaf.  This is not even your mama’s seitan loaf, tofu turkey, or nut roast.  It doesn’t taste like meat.  It doesn’t even pretend to have the texture of meat. But if you like savory, Thanksgiving flavors so concentrated that you can just skip the gravy and dressing, you will want [...]

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Banana-Maple Oatmeal Cookies

February 14, 2010
Banana-Maple Oatmeal Cookies

What can I say about these cookies? Should I start with the fact that they contain no white flour, only oatmeal and whole wheat? Or is it more important to note that they’re sweetened with pure maple syrup? Or should I remind you that since this is the FatFree Vegan Kitchen, they contain no added [...]

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Black-eyed Pea Masala

January 4, 2010
Black-eyed Pea Masala

Welcome to 2010! It’s a new decade as well as a new year, and perhaps because of that, more people than usual are making resolutions to eat healthier. From PCRM’s 21-Day Vegan Kickstart to my own Eat-2-Live Group’s “Happy New You Challenge,” lots of us are pledging to stick to a healthy lifestyle. Yes, you [...]

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Skinny Figgy Bars

December 20, 2009
Skinny Figgy Bars

I hope you enjoy this “rerun” of a recipe I associate closely with Christmas. It’s my low-fat, veganized interpretation of the fig-filled cookies my husband’s grandmother always made for Christmas. D looked forward to those cookies every year, and once he married a vegan, his grandmother often made a special egg-free batch just for us. [...]

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New World Wassail: A Drink to Your Health

December 14, 2009
New World Wassail

Most of the holiday food traditions in my family seem to involve oranges. October through January is citrus season in southeastern Louisiana, or at least in my parents’ garden, so both Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrated with plenty of citrusy dishes like ambrosia, cranberry relish (with raw orange peel included), lemon pies, and wassail. During [...]

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Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin Biscuit Crust

November 14, 2009
Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin Biscuit Crust

I’m leaving you—and my husband and child—for a little over a week. By the time you read this, I will be cruising the Caribbean with my parents and sister. But at least I’m providing you with a new holiday dish (and the family with leftovers). Since I won’t be getting back until just before Thanksgiving, [...]

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Pumpkin Pie Bites

November 9, 2009
Pumpkin Pie Bites

My daughter and I go kind of pumpkin crazy this time of year. It starts when we see the first small pie pumpkins in the grocery store and she convinces me that we just have to have one. She takes it home, decorates it with permanent markers, and then refuses to let me cook her [...]

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Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

October 26, 2009
Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

I used to love biscuits. I was raised on my mom’s Bisquick biscuits and sometime during college graduated to baking and devouring Southern-style biscuits made with White Lily flour and lots of butter or margarine. Living alone in my tiny student apartment, I would bake up batches of huge, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits on the weekend [...]

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Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

October 19, 2009
Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

At the farmers’ market a couple of weeks ago, I picked up two butternut squash that were each about the length of my hand. Since I love roasting butternut with a touch of lemon, I was considering cooking them in that tried and true (but unimaginative) manner when I got the idea to roast one [...]

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Strawberry-Blueberry Tapioca Parfaits

June 28, 2009
Strawberry-Blueberry Tapioca Parfaits

Red, white, and blue and good for you too! Silly as they are, those are the words that popped into my head as I sat down to write about these luscious parfaits. I had the Fourth of July on my mind when I started planning a dessert with strawberries and blueberries, but it occurs to [...]

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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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They Won Our Hearts

February 14, 2009
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With 34 delicious entries in this year’s Vegetable Love contest, it was anybody’s game. To me, all of the recipes were winners because I would love to have any of them as part of my Valentine’s meal. I think you voters agreed: 897 votes were cast, and every recipe had its fans. But very early [...]

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Vote for Your Vegetable Love

February 11, 2009
Vegetable Love

This year, thirty-four bloggers stepped up to the challenge to create a romantic, vegetable Valentine’s Day dish, and the results are impressive. The entries are all so creative, delicious-looking, and downright sexy that I’m certain that I could never pick a favorite. Fortunately, that’s your job. Please do these contestants the honor of visiting their [...]

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Chocolate Covered Cherry Pudding Cake

February 9, 2009
Chocolate-Covered Cherry Pudding Cake

A few days ago I challenged you to come up with delicious Valentine’s Day dishes that contain vegetables, and now here I am offering up a V-Day dessert that is completely devoid of vegetables. How hypocritical is that? What can I say? With all of you (15 bloggers so far) handling the vegetable dishes, I [...]

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Vegetable Love 2009

February 1, 2009

Update: Check out the entrants and the winners! Valentine’s Day is less than two weeks away, so you know what that means. No, not hearts and flowers (though possibly some chocolate). I’m talking about Vegetable Love, my annual challenge to my fellow bloggers to create some hot, sexy, vegetable-filled Valentine’s recipes, the kind of dishes [...]

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Moin-Moin (Nigerian Savory Black-eyed Pea Cake)

January 1, 2009
Moin-Moin

Happy New Year! As you know, it’s supposed to be lucky to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. Every year around this time I scour my cookbooks and my imagination for new ways to cook them because the way I grew up eating them was, frankly, a little boring–as well as not vegetarian. Last [...]

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Lower-Fat Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

December 23, 2008
Lower-Fat Peanut Butter Cookies

Every year around the holidays, I like to post a recipe (or two) that’s a little higher in fat than my normal fare. Last year it was Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake and the year before it was Eggnog Cheesecake. This year I’m departing from the cheesecake theme to bring you a treat that’s higher in [...]

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What to Do With Leftover Pumpkin

November 30, 2008
What to Do with Leftover Pumpkin

I’m willing to bet that immediately after Thanksgiving, Google sees the number of searches for “leftover turkey” skyrocket. A comparable search for vegetarians would have to be “leftover pumpkin,” though having half or two-thirds a can of leftover pumpkin after the holidays is certainly not a strictly vegetarian problem. Many recipes call for just a [...]

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Mushroom, Lentil, and Wild Rice Timbales

November 23, 2008
Mushroom, Lentil, and Wild Rice Timbales

My Thanksgiving menu planning will always be an exercise in fantasy because we celebrate the holiday at my in-laws’, but if I were serving Thanksgiving dinner at my house this year, my menu would include Green Bean Casserole, mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, cornbread dressing, Cranberry Relish, Sweet Potato Casserole, Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake, and these [...]

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Sweet Dumpling Squash Stuffed with Lemon-Herb Rice

November 18, 2008
Sweet Dumpling Squash Stuffed with Lemon-Herb Rice

One of my favorite ways to cook winter squash is to roast it simply with lemon, salt, and pepper. So when I brought home these beautiful sweet dumpling squash and started thinking about how to use them, my first impulse was toward the simple lemon treatment. But these little cuties are just the perfect size [...]

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Apple-Pumpkin Delight

November 11, 2008
Apple-Pumpkin Delight

What if you love pie but don’t like crust? Strange as it sounds to me, I have a daughter who doesn’t like crust–on bread, on pizza, or on pie. Her aversion is not a big deal because she can always eat around it, but since I have my own reasons for avoiding pie crust, I [...]

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Pumpkin Cookies

October 30, 2008
Pumpkin Cookies

What I love most about sharing recipes online is the conversation that follows, when readers share their tips and variations. I’m constantly getting ideas from you: ingredients I haven’t tried, short-cuts that make a recipe faster, substitutions I’ve never thought of. Case in point, this email I received earlier this week from Emily Findley in [...]

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Spooky Black Bean Hummus

October 25, 2008
Spooky Black Bean Hummus

I have two standard Halloween recipes in my, ahhem, repertoire. One of them involves baking the equivalent of a 4-layer chocolate cake in the shape of a pumpkin; it contains a gazillion calories and takes most of an afternoon to make. As you can probably guess, I don’t make that one very often. When I [...]

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Pumpkin and Black Bean Casserole

October 17, 2008
Pumpkin Black Bean Casserole

I’d like to begin this pumpkin recipe with an unintentionally Halloweenish photo: Look closely. I was trying to take a basic photo of our homegrown pumpkin–the accidental result of tossing last year’s seeds into the compost pile–when someone decided that she would make a better subject. So what you see here is an accidental photo [...]

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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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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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Cherry-Chocolate Mousse Pie

April 16, 2008
Cherry-Chocolate Mousse Pie

E had a wonderful birthday yesterday and appreciated all of your comments. She spent the afternoon playing with her new basketball goal, the present that she asked for and got early because it took D and me two weekends to put it together. After eating the dinner she requested (Mac and Cheese), she opened her [...]

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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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(Vegetable) Love is All Around

February 11, 2008
Vegetable Love

I asked for it, and I got it: 23 of the most delectably enticing dishes featuring vegetables. From asparagus to zucchini, these recipes prove that vegetables can be as romantic as chocolate truffles and champagne (though I’m not saying that your Valentine’s dinner can’t have all three!) All the wonderful entries are listed below in [...]

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Creole Black-eyed Peas

January 8, 2008
Creole Black-eyed Peas

Last year, a cold made me feel so miserable that I didn’t even think of having my traditional New Year’s black-eyed peas until a few days into the new year. This year I was determined to have them on New Year’s Day, despite the fact that a sizzling, burning short in our breaker box had [...]

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Roasted Pecans

December 21, 2007
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Pecans for Click* Welcome new readers! If you’re visiting this blog for the first time, either because of the mention in Vegetarian Times or because of the Food Blog Awards, you may be wondering, “What’s a blog about ‘fat-free’ cooking doing with a post about pecans, which are almost all fat?” The truth is that [...]

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Fat-Free, Gluten-Free Gingerbread Biscotti

December 14, 2007
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First the good news: Baking these biscotti made my house smell magical, like being inside a gingerbread house (without those nosy Hansel and Gretel or that mean old witch). Furthermore, my daughter loved them, which surprised me because I’d always considered biscotti a grownup cookie, hard and crunchy and meant for dipping into grownup drinks [...]

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Chocolate-Orange Cake

December 3, 2007
Chocolate-Orange Cake

It’s citrus season in the Deep South. All along the highways of southern Louisiana and Mississippi, vendors are setting up stands selling local satsumas and oranges. I noticed them when D, E, and I were driving back from New Orleans at Thanksgiving, but I didn’t need to stop because we were already en route to [...]

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Post-Thanksgiving Miscellaneous Edition

November 25, 2007

We had a good Thanksgiving visit with my husband’s family in New Orleans, but I’m glad to be back home. A couple of people wanted to know what Bryanna’s Soy and Seitan “Turkey” was like, so I thought I’d post our impressions along with a couple of photos. Here’s how it looked just after it [...]

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Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

November 21, 2007
Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

[Insert standard "this is not a fat-free recipe" disclaimer here. Geez, what was I thinking when I named this blog!] I know most of you who celebrate Thanksgiving have already figured out your menus. I’m probably the only slacker who still doesn’t know what she’s cooking! I’m lucky, though. I’m going to my in-laws’ celebration [...]

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Quinoa and Red Lentil Cutlets and Roasted Pumpkin and Vegetables

November 20, 2007
Quinoa and Red Lentil Cutlets

I make no secret of the fact that I don’t really like Thanksgiving. I’ve tried my best to see it as a time to get together with family without all the commercialization of Christmas, but all the emphasis on food just annoys me. It’s probably not surprising that as a vegan I bristle at the [...]

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Persimmon Bread

November 16, 2007
Persimmon Bread

It’s persimmon time again, or at least it was, very briefly, in my parents’ yard in Louisiana. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my dad saying that if I wanted persimmons, I’d better come get them because they were rapidly going from ripe to overripe to compost. He’d pick what was [...]

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5 Croquette Recipes

November 12, 2007
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Spinach-Sun Dried Tomato Hummus Croquettes by Jule I’m busy compiling a complete round-up of all the Can This Recipe Be Saved Contest entries. But before I could do that, I needed to give the recipes that were emailed to me (rather than posted on blogs) a place of their own on the web. So here, [...]

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Fresh Cranberry Sorbet

November 8, 2007
Fresh Cranberry Sorbet

I have an addiction. It affects me during only one season of the year, but still it’s a problem because I spend way more money than I should on it and then wind up stuffing my stash in the freezer and hoping that it will last me the rest of the year. I’m talking about [...]

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Vegan Magic Cookie Bars

October 17, 2007
Magic Cookie Bars

Warning: This is not a fat-free recipe. In fact, there is absolutely nothing healthy about this recipe except, perhaps, the nuts. This is definitely the most fat-filled, junk foodish recipe that you’ll see on this blog, ever. I just want to make that clear right from the start or else I’ll get letters. I’ll probably [...]

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Keeping it Light and Cool on the Fourth of July

July 1, 2007
Strawberry-Blueberry Tapoica Parfaits

I can’t remember ever celebrating the 4th of July when I was growing up. Perhaps the holiday blended into other summer days of swimming and picnics so that now I don’t remember it as anything special, but whatever the case, I grew into adulthood not realizing that other people actually have special parties and picnics [...]

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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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St. Patrick’s Day Zucchini Muffins

March 18, 2007
Low-Fat Zucchini Muffins

St. Patrick’s Day is a pretty big deal here in Jackson. There’s a big parade, featuring a phenomenon called Sweet Potato Queens, which I won’t even try to explain, especially because being a newcomer I don’t really understand it myself. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of big-haired, gaudily-clad women with artificially [...]

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Happy Mardi Gras!

February 20, 2007

We had a great weekend in New Orleans. We drove in on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the day out on the street watching parades until about 9:30 that night. I didn’t want to risk breaking or losing my good camera, so I brought my old one and managed to get only a [...]

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Valentine’s Treat: Chocolate Cookies Two Ways

February 14, 2007
Chocolate Cookies

As soon as I saw the recipe for Balsamic Chocolate Drops at Habeas Brûlée, I knew I had to try it. Not only was I intrigued by the use of balsamic vinegar to enhance the chocolate flavor, but these fudgy drops were also easily veganized and already lower in fat than most cookies. So I [...]

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Vegetables for Valentines – The Vegetable Love Round-Up

February 13, 2007

Last week I challenged my readers to come up with the most sensuous, delicious, and romantic vegan Valentine’s dishes they could imagine. The only catches were that they had to be low-fat, and they had to use vegetables. Well 17 of you (and counting) rose to the challenge and cooked up some fabulous meals. Thanks [...]

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Vegan Eggnog Cheesecake

December 23, 2006
Eggnog Cheesecake

You know a dessert is good when your photo shoot is cut short because you started eating it! But it’s no wonder I gave in to temptation; I decided to combine two things I can’t resist—eggnog and cheesecake. (Vegan versions, of course.) And the combination was just as delicious as I expected. But enough from [...]

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Pumpkin Spice Bread

December 19, 2006
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Reading other food blogs over the past couple of weeks has made me think a little about how being vegan has influenced my gift-giving. While lots of cooks, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike, merrily bake and pack up goodies to give as gifts, I’ve become a little hesitant about giving gifts of food. It’s not that [...]

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Calamondin (or Lemon) Pie with Oatmeal Cookie Crust

December 15, 2006
Calamondin or Lemon Pie

I started making this pie years ago, while visiting my parents for the winter holidays. In November, their citrus trees start producing more fruit than my parents can use, so by December they’re giving fruit away by the bagful. And since my father has a big sweet-tooth (which E. and I have inherited), he’s always [...]

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Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping

December 11, 2006
Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping

I’m going to be honest with you and admit that I’m not a big fan of holidays. Stressing over some arbitrary date on the calendar–to cook certain foods, travel long distances, buy token gifts, and so on–has never been my idea of fun. For a long time, I felt the same way about the traditional [...]

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Ambrosia

December 10, 2006
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I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about not telling you what happened with the Thai eggplants and citrus fruit that I wrote about after Thanksgiving. I’m afraid I made up a new, very successful recipe for the eggplants but didn’t write it down or photograph the dish. You see, it was late and we were [...]

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The Best Vegan Green Bean Casserole

November 22, 2006
Vegan Green Bean Casserole

I just had to write a quick post about this recipe because D. and I just had some for lunch and oh my gosh, it is good! Truly, we were scraping the casserole dish clean. This is adapted and plagiarized from Alanna’s World’s Best Green Bean Casserole, and I have to say, the name fits. [...]

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My Family’s Cranberry Relish Recipe

November 21, 2006
Cranberry Relish

I emailed my mother to get her cranberry relish recipe, the one my husband and I descend on like a pair of hungry fruit bats each year. She emailed me the recipe, but what she sent didn’t quite match my memory of the dish because I thought it had apples in it. By the time [...]

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Tofu Stuffed with Brown Rice and Mushroom Dressing

November 14, 2006
Tofu Stuffed with Brown Rice and Mushroom Dressing

Thanksgiving came early to our house this year. Though we’ll be visiting my in-laws for the main big feast, I decided to have a little celebration just for my own little family. After all, we have a lot to be thankful for. Besides, I wanted to try my hand at something that couldn’t easily survive [...]

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Pumpkin and Roasted Corn Soup

November 1, 2006
Pumpkin and Roasted Corn Soup

Here in Mississippi, you never know what the weather is going to be like on Halloween. Plan on having a hot bowl of soup for dinner and you’ll be disappointed when the temperature climbs into the 80′s. Last night was like that. Although it was a lovely night and the kids were very comfortable in [...]

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Impossible Vegan Pumpkin Pie

October 9, 2006
Impossible Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Most of you who guessed yesterday’s mystery food were right: Pumpkin or Squash Pie is a good enough answer on this test. But, if I were the kind of teacher who demands exact answers (and I used to be), you would have had to have written “Impossible Fat-Free Gluten-Free Vegan Cushaw Pie” in order to [...]

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Red, White, and Blue Fruit Terrine

July 5, 2006
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Here’s a light, summery dessert that will dress up any picnic table and not blow your diet. I used a white grape/peach 100% juice blend and added agar to create a healthy, updated “Jell-O” mold. The red, white, and blue layers are also 100% fruit–and 100% adaptable. Use your favorite combination of fruits, though some, [...]

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Can’t Be Beet Chocolate Cake!

February 28, 2006
Beet Chocolate Cake

[Please allow me this one cutesie title, and I promise not to do it again (fingers crossed secretly behind back).] That’s no misspelling you see in the title. I actually made chocolate cake yesterday and put beets in it. And, if you’re asking (as my husband D. did) Why?, then I’ll tell you as I [...]

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Sweet Heart Toast

February 14, 2006
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Instead of a Valentine’s Dinner, how about a Valentine’s breakfast? Or brunch? Or breakfast for dinner? Here’s a simple idea that looks pretty on the plate. I took slices of regular whole-grain bread, cut them into heart shapes, made them into vegan French toast, and sandwiched a simple fruit mixture between them. Fresh strawberries are [...]

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Valentine’s Dessert #2: Fatfree and Fabulous Fudgy Brownies

February 13, 2006
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You’ve been so virtuous and faithful. Sure, your eyes have wandered and you’ve had a few impure thoughts, but you made a commitment and plan to stick to it. Yet, there’s only so much temptation a person can take . . . . Well, give in to the temptation and stay true–to your healthy diet! [...]

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Valentine’s Dessert #1: Fruit Medley Cobbler

February 12, 2006
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When you think of romantic Valentine’s Day meals, the words “low-fat” and “vegan” probably don’t spring right to mind. But they might after you try this luscious dessert, designed to feed your romantic spirit without wrecking your diet. The perfect follow-up to a candle-lit dinner, this cobbler contains 4 different fresh fruits–and heart-healthy oats as [...]

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