Carrot Soup and Homemade Bread
Jane and I were out tooling around today and had a large lunch, so we weren't very hungry for dinner tonight. Since it was a little damp and overcast, it was a perfect night for soup. The soup, Indian Spiced Carrot Soup, is from Epicurious.com with minimal veganizing. We replaced the yogurt with Tofutti Sour Cream, and used vegetable broth, of course. Thanks to Christiane for suggesting it the other day. It has a light exotic taste.
And what goes better with homemade soup than homemade bread? So Jane baked the Simply Crusty Bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
We cannot recommend this recipe enough. It's simple... four ingredients! And best of all, you make the dough and whatever you don't use goes into the fridge so you can have bread any time you want (within two weeks of making the dough). This bread tasted just as good as the Julia Childs french bread Jane made for the February Daring Bakers Challenge, but it was oh so much easier. (And there was no blood involved!)
If you decide to try the soup, we would suggest cooking the carrots and onions until they're tender before adding the broth. Also, Jane uses an immersion blender (if you don't have one yet, buy one!) instead of trying to transfer the hot soup to a food processor.
“Today” was not a Vegan Day
Ann Gentry appeared on the Today Show this morning. Jane and I were really looking forward to this segment. We were incredibly excited to have a vegan representative on such a mainstream television program. But after watching our recording of the program, we were terribly disappointed with the whole thing. The segment was only three minutes long, the hosts were chatting over each other... it felt more like a group of high school girls talking about their diets rather than a healthy eating segment on a nationally respected program.
Ms. Gentry is the founder of Real Food Daily (an excellent vegan restaurant with two locations here in Los Angeles which has also sparked a wonderful cookbook: Real Food Daily Cookbook
Most disappointing of all however, was that the recipe Ms. Gentry chose to showcase. Instead of offering a vegan preparation, she chose a recipe that required, as a garnish, parmesean cheese. She did mention that people who are lactose intolerant or "hard-core vegans" could use a dairy-free cheese. Once again, making the vegan choice appear to be a sacrifice, rather than a valid, healthy eating regimen. I would have expected her to prepare an easy, delicious vegan recipe, since the fare at her restaurant is vegan, as are the recipes in the RFD cookbook (even though both the restaurant and cookbook purport to be vegetarian). I guess her choice was based on the fact that "vegetarian" is probably a tough enough sell to most people.
In case you didn't catch it... here's the video. You can be disappointed too! (BTW, this is the segment in it's entirety.
Apparently, Ms. Gentry had four recipes lined up for her segment this morning, but didn't even get to finish the first recipe. Here's a link to the article, and recipes as they appear on the Vegetarian Times website.
Who Says the Brits Can’t Cook
First off, let me apologize to anyone I may have offended with that statement, but when I was growing up in New York it was common "knowledge" that British Cuisine was an oxymoron. Bangers and Mash, Salisbury steak, Toad-in-the-Hole, Steak and Kidney Pie; none of these are particularly appealing to me, and so I had written off British Cuisine as something that I wouldn't partake of.I have recently changed my mind about that. While I can't say that any of the dishes listed above could ever entice me to give up my vegan life, I have stumbled across a few cooking shows that have caused me to re-think my ideas on British Cuisine.
In my recent pre-vegan days, Nigella Lawson always had something tempting to offer on her TV show, Nigella Feasts; not to mention her sensual treatment of food. Her show always made me want to eat something. There are a few things I remember seeing her prepare which could be easily converted for the vegan diet, and some that were vegan. Nigella's website (link above) has a recipe index, but it appears the recipes are submitted by visitors to the site. I haven't gotten my hands on any of her cookbooks, so I can't discuss whether her recipes cook up well. But everything looks enticing.
Yesterday I caught a program called "You Are What You Eat" on the BBC network. There is some considerable discussion on the web as to whether Gillian McKeith is legitimate... her science is suspect and she seems to be a snake oil peddler. BUT, the show is entertaining and inspiring. It starts with "Dr." McKeith secretly watching the client for a week or so, then piling up what they've eaten for a week. It's absolutely astonishing to see what people will put in their mouths. Then she barks at her clients and teaches them a bit about nutrition. And they live happily ever after by the end of the show.
I'm not sure that it's something I would watch regularly, but it did inspire me to do some googling, and this link is what inspired me to write this post. I spent considerable time on this site, it's clean and well designed and very informative.
And finally, they have vegan recipes (just click on the vegan option). So, who says the Brits can't cook?
I’ve got my baker back!
I've been missing Jane's baking. It's not like she baked something every week, but she baked occasionally, and she baked really well. Her coffeecake and strawberry shortcake are some of my favorites, along with apple pie and berry pie. Or her cookies. I could wax poetic here, but I'll spare you all.
Anyway, I've been whining. I understand that learning how to cook vegan after cooking non-vegan for 20+ years is a bit of a challenge. And the baked goods we've tried eating out haven't been particularly inspiring.
So, I've been poking around a few message boards to see what other people are doing. And I got this recipe from one of them: Link Here
Jane made this version of muffins, and they were yummy. We ate the batch in 3 days. (That's two muffins per person per day -- and maybe Jane didn't have two muffins every day.)
Because of the conversion from British cooking to American, they weren't perfect. Jane is going to use a little less oil and sugar and more flour in her next go round. But yay, I've got my baker back!
