Is It Too Hot for Soup?

In my world, it is never too hot for soup.  That statement doesn't mean that we don't get hot in our state, but I love soup even on the hottest of days. 

I had some home cooked chickpeas lounging around in my freezer, so I put together this soup.  It was filling yet light, perfect for summertime.

I had some pasta in my pantry that someone had given me.  It was made with carrots and squash, and it was great.  I need to be more adventurous in my pasta purchasing. 

CHICKPEA NOODLE SOUP

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

4 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
8 cups of vegetable broth
1 tsp. white or yellow miso paste
2 tsp. tamari
1 Tbsp. vegan Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp. vegan “no chicken” boullion base, optional
Louisiana hot sauce, ½ tsp or to taste
1/2 to 1 tsp. kosher salt, or to taste
2 whole bay leaves
15 ounces chickpeas, drained and rinsed
8 oz. of pasta, cooked

In a dutch oven, warm the olive oil up, then add the carrots, celery, and onion.  Saute over high heat until onions are translucent.

Add broth, miso paste, tamari, Worcestershire sauce, boullion base, Louisiana hot sauce, salt, and bay leaves.  Cook for another 6 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Remove the bay leaves and stir in chickpeas.  Check for seasonings and adjust.  Heat soup up to desired temperature.

 Dip up the soup into bowls and add the pasta to each bowl.  If storing the soup for later use, keep the pasta separate until ready to serve. 

I always keep my pasta separate from my soup until I dip it into each serving
bowl.  I used to cook the pasta in the soup.  If there were leftovers, the next time I would look at my soup, there would be little to no broth left, and the pasta would be much bigger and not al dente at all.  It did not take much brain power to realize that as the soup sat, the pasta was absorbing the broth.  It is so easy just to keep them separated until serving time.
 
Husband's note: I had two bowls.

Plant Based and Gluten Free Cookies

My husband and I do not have a problem with wheat products, so we don't normally have to deal with cooking gluten free.  For this, I am very thankful.  However, we have a member of our family who has a serious gluten allergy, as well as many other food allergies.  It has been a long journey for the parents of this child to find out what was causing these severe allergies.  It is not surprising to me that the doctors have not really been of very much help.  I salute parents who don't give up when it is apparent that something is very wrong. 

I am starting to change some of my recipes so that they can be gluten free, for when this child visits our home.  Some of my recipes can't really be changed to accommodate this, but with a few tweaks, some recipes can meet this challenge. 

        
PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1 flax egg (1 Tbsp. ground flax mixed with 3 Tbsp. warm water)

¼ cup non-dairy buttery spread
¼ cup peanut butter
½ cup lightly packed brown sugar
¼ cup cane sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. kosher salt
1 cup gluten free rolled oats, blended into a flour (or 1 cup oat flour)
1 cup almonds, blended into a flour, (or 1 cup + 2 Tbsp. almond flour)
½ cup vegan chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

In a small bowl, mix together the flax egg and set aside for five minutes.

Beat the buttery spread and peanut butter until combined.  Add both sugars and   Beat in the flax egg and vanilla extract until combined.

beat for one minute more.

Mix the dry ingredients, (baking soda, baking powder, salt, oat flour, and almond flour in another bowl.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat to combine.  Stir in the chocolate chips.

Place mixture into the fridge for at least one hour. 

 Shape dough into one inch balls and place on the baking sheet.  No need to flatten the balls, as they will spread out on their own.  Place balls 2-3 inches apart. 

Bake for 11-13 minutes until lightly golden.  Let cookies rest on the cooking sheet for 4-5 minutes before placing on a cooling rack.

I noticed that the first tray of cookies were a little thicker than the subsequent trays of cookies. 

I  prefer the thicker cookies, so next time I will refrigerate the dough for a longer period of time.  This time I only left them in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.  I think that will make a big difference.

 If you or someone in your family requires gluten free food, I would encourage you to find recipes and try to do at least some of your meal preparation in a whole food type of way, meaning less packaged goods. 

I found the prices of gluten free packaged foods incredibly expensive.  I think the food industry has taken advantage of people who require gluten free food. 

Let Them Eat Cake!

I have not had much success with plant based desserts.  I think there are several reasons for this.  One is that I don't make a lot of desserts, because then I will eat them.  However, I would like to have a few tried and true dessert recipes for when we have people over for a meal. 

I think another reason is because I am very picky about desserts.  If I am going to have the calories and eat substances that are maybe not the best for my health, they need to be truly delicious, because I consider that an occasional treat.  I have tried a few plant based desserts which just weren't very good at all.  I felt like a piece of fruit would have tasted better than the dessert recipe.

Well, I found a great recipe for chocolate cake.  It is actually a recipe I used many years ago when it was just my husband and myself in the home.  This makes an 8" x 8" cake, much better for a two person household. 

WACKY CAKE

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar
4 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil, (or can substitute half of this with applesauce)
1 cup water

Grease and flour an 8” x 8” baking pan.

Mix flour, sugar, and cocoa in a medium bowl.  Make three depressions in the dry ingredients.  Pour vanilla into one depression, vinegar in another, and oil in the third one.  Pour water over all and stir well.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.   Place cake on cooling rack and cool completely.  Cover with frosting.

CHOCOLATE FROSTING

 4 Tbsp. vegan “butter”, room temperature

7 Tbsp. baking cocoa
2 cups powdered sugar
2-3 Tbsp. almond milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, (use only 2 Tbsp. of the almond milk at first) and blend together with a mixer.  Add more almond milk as needed until it is of desired consistency. 

This frosting recipe probably makes more than is needed on this small cake, but I like a lot of frosting on my cakes.  If I am going to have a treat, I want it to be really good!

Husband's note: Amen

Making It Work

I was planning to have an easy dinner of veggie soft tacos.  I wanted to use up some stuff from my freezer.  I wanted to use up some adzuki beans, because they had been in the freezer since November.  After I heated them up and mashed them up a bit to make oil free "refried" beans, I realized I needed a few more beans.  I heated up a container of frozen pinto beans and added them to the adzuki beans.  I never thought about using more than one variety of beans for refried beans, but I really liked them a lot.  I will purposefully do this in the future.

I had planned to make some guacamole with the four small avocados on my
counter top.  Well, I have been having a terrible time getting good avocados this year.  When I cut into the avocados, two of the four were unusable.  I get so discouraged paying for avocados and then throwing them away.  I buy them while they are still hard and let them ripen on my counter top.   Backup plan was to dice the two small avocados which were okay and squeeze lime juice over them.  Not as good as guacamole, but still very good. 

Overall, the tacos turned out very well.  I forgot to chop up the lettuce and add it, which would have been some nice crunch.  Sometimes when I make something like this, a no recipe meal, I will  jot down the items I want to include.  That really helps me a lot, because I inevitably get caught up in the preparation and forget an item or two.

Bulgur Salad with Dried Cranberries

With summertime here, it is time to make some new salads.  I have a large amount of grains that I need to use up, so decided to go in that direction. 

Bulgur is a whole grain, usually sold parboiled and dried, with only a very small amount of the bran partially removed.  It has a light, nutty flavor.  It has a very high nutritional value.  It is a common ingredient in Armenian, Israeli, Lebanese, and Mediterranean dishes. 

I have tried to like tabouli, but I never could fully embrace it.  This recipe is basically a take off of tabouli, but it has no mint and has the addition of dried cranberries.  Now I am thinking that maybe it was the large amount of mint in the tabouli that I did not love.

Anyway, this salad was a big hit with my family and was very easy to make.

BULGUR SALAD WITH DRIED CRANBERRIES

1 cup coarse ground bulgur

2 cups cubed, peeled English cucumber
1 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion
1 cup finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tsp. grated lemon rind
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1-2 tsp. agave nectar, optional
¾ tsp. kosher salt
¾ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Place bulgur in a bowl and cover with 2 cups boiling water.  Cover and let stand 30 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.  Fluff with a fork.  Let bulgur cool to room temperature.  Add remaining ingredients.  Toss to combine.  Refrigerate for at least one hour, but even better for several hours. 

I thought the bulgur might get too soft overnight, but when we pulled the leftover salad out the next day, it was still very good.

Snout to Tail Vegan Style

If it's Saturday, it's Farmer's Market Day for us.  We don't make it there every Saturday, but I sure wish we did.  This Saturday we made the trip to the market.  I usually have a grocery list, but once I get down there, all bets are off.  Whatever looks good to me, comes home with us.

We got back home in plenty of time to cook lunch.  As I was putting the produce away, I got to thinking about
the waste from some of the veggies.  We had bought a huge bunch of radishes, with a lot of good looking leaves.  I had never cooked radish leaves before, but I had tasted them before and always thought they had a really good taste.  I cut the leaves off the radishes, washed them, and set them aside.

I had bought a large bunch of green
onions, (scallions), with green tops which were over a foot long.  I cut off a large portion of the green tops to make them fit into the fridge.  I washed those long pieces of green tops and put them aside.

I decided at this point that I would make beans and greens.  I took some garbanzo beans out of the freezer and thawed them in the microwave.   I cooked a pot of rice blend, which
included brown Japonica rice, long grain red rice, and heirloom black rice, (something I found at Costco this last week).  It was delicious, by the way,  and I would definitely purchase this again.

Then I cut up some rainbow chard and dinosaur kale which I had bought at the Farmer's Market.  Okay, the lunch started coming together.  I have to come clean here, as actually at this point I turned all of this over to my son to saute and bring together as he saw fit.

He sauteed the kale, radish greens, chard, and some baby spinach together in
vegetable broth.  Then he added the chopped green onions and sauteed a few more minutes.  He added salt, pepper, some Tabasco sauce, and Northwoods Seasoning blend, (from Penzey's).   At this point we added the garbanzo beans and heated them through.

We served the beans and greens over the rice blend, with chow chow added to the top.  Some good old cornbread rounded out the meal.

It is really fun to cook like this, with no recipe.  I know some people cook like this a lot, with great results.  My daughter does this style of cooking most of the time, and that girl can really cook!

Our inspiration for this meal, as my son stated, was to take the "snout to tail" approach to cooking, as referred to using a whole hog, with no waste.  In our plant based way of cooking, we were taking things which were sometimes thrown away, (radish greens, the tops of green onions), and using them in our dish.  It was the best "beans and greens" dish I have ever tasted.  Our son called it "roots to tops" cooking.

Spanish Rice! Olé!

My favorite side dish for a Mexican meal is Spanish rice.  I tried quite a few recipes, but they all seemed too strongly flavored for me.  That seems strange, since I love very flavorful dishes.  I think I like a mildly flavored Spanish rice because it accompanies a spicy dish most usually in my kitchen.  If more than one spicy dish is served at once, I feel like they sort of cancel each other out.

SPANISH RICE

2 Tbsp. olive oil, (or up to 1/4 cup)

1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 cups of long grain white rice
1 Tbsp. chili powder or taco seasoning
1 pinch oregano
1 heaping Tbsp. tomato paste
1 tsp salt, or to taste
3 cups of vegetable broth, heated in a microwave until hot

In a large saucepan, sauté the onion for a few minutes.  Add the garlic and saute for about two minutes.  Add the rice and saute about four minutes, stirring often.  Add the chili powder, oregano, and tomato paste.  Saute for a minute or two.  Add the salt and the hot vegetable broth.  Bring to a simmer.  Cover and cook on low about 15 minutes.  Turn off heat and let sit for five minutes, then fluff the rice.

I actually think this is quite authentic, but can't swear to that.  I always thought it would be great to have more diversity in my family, so that I would have grown up eating and learning how to make all those great ethnic meals.