How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, or Not

Jane has Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" on loan from our local library. She likes to test drive new recipes prior to buying a new cookbook. This cookbook looks very promising. It's almost 1,000 pages and seems quite comprehensive. The recipes we've read sound appealing. So we're pretty excited to try a few.

Recently, we went to our favorite local Indian restaurant and had a delicious, new-to-us, eggplant dish. As Jane was going through the Bittman Cookbook she found a recipe that looked similar to that dish. She actually called me to tell me about it and that she was going to prepare that recipe for dinner tonight. In response to "what are we eating tonight" I usually hear "dinner." Jane has long since stopped telling me what I'm getting since, on rare occasion, I might have suggested I'd rather eat something other than what she was preparing. So I knew she was pretty excited about this recipe since I was hearing about it in advance.

Unfortunately, the dish didn't live up to what we had at Akbar, the Indian restaurant I've been referring too. We were both pretty disappointed in the results. The dish looks pretty, and smells good, but it was kind of, well... not what we had at Akbar. So, this recipes not a keeper. But we're not through with this cookbook just yet.

Cream of Tomato Soup with a Surprize

It' s been cold here again. That always makes me think of soup. Luckily, Jane thinks the same way, so we've been having a variety of soups and stews lately. In our pre-vegan life, one of our old standby meals was cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, with a green salad. The only possibility left from that meal is the green salad.

This week's foray to the library resulted in us borrowing The Taste for Living Cookbook: Mike Milken's Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer by Michael Milken and Beth Ginsberg. It's not a vegan cookbook but it promotes itself as a collection of recipes for fighting cancer, so that got our attention (Jane's family history of cancer being one of the primary reasons we're vegans now). The book is fresh looking and attractively laid out, and a number of the recipes are vegan, and sound interesting. And lo and behold, one of the first recipes in the book is for Cream of Tomato Soup.

So, last night Jane made their version of cream of tomato soup. Cream? you might ask. Well in place of the cream it comes with a surprise... Their note states that oats can be used as a cream replacement in any pureed soup. (Huh?) To accompany the soup, Jane made grilled cheese sandwiches with vegan cheese. (Woo hoo, old standby!) And, as usual a green salad, this time topped with Chili Lime Dressing (recipe from the aforementioned book).

To recap: new cookbook, two new recipes. The salad dressing was outright awful. Thankfully, Jane only made half the recipe, so dumping the rest down the drain wasn't as wasteful as it could have been. The soup wasn't awful, but didn't hold up to the grilled cheese at all. We had leftover soup tonight with the last of the Tender Potato Bread Focaccia; it was better the second day. I don't know whether that's because the flavors had a chance to mature overnight, or if the bread was a better compliment than the grilled cheese.

Stew... Boo!

Dinner tonight was some kind of stew: Black eyed peas, yams, spinach, and soy-chorizo (a Mexican spicy sausage). When I used to cook, Jane and I would have discussions about whether cooking is a science (my opinion) or an art (her opinion). I used to follow recipes exactly. Jane will modify recipes at the drop of a hat; if she doesn't have something on hand, she'll substitute something she feels is logical. Often, she'll eyeball the amount of an ingredient, and if it's something she likes, she'll add more of it to the pot. Most of the time this works out just fine. Every once in a while it is a complete disaster.

The recipe she used tonight called for sausage and red pepper flakes. She had soy-chorizo in the refrigerator that was nearing its expiration date. Since the chorizo is spicy, Jane figured she could use that minus the pepper flakes and all would be well.

Muy spicy! Our first few bites were not promising at all, but as we continued eating our dinner, it grew on us. This iteration of this dish will not be a repeat, however! Jane promised she'd try it again, as the recipe specifies.

Our First Clunker

So far we've been fairly pleased with our vegan diet. The products have been mostly good. The recipes we've tried have, for the most part, been things we'd make again. Although I didn't love the peach cobbler, and there was a cabbage salad that we won't be making ever again, we haven't run across anything that we've found inedible or completely unpalatable... until now.

One of our vegan cookbooks suggests Umeboshi Paste, which is a Japanese pickled plum puree, makes for a really wonderful alternative to butter on your corn on the cob. Since we had always loved corn on the cob dripping with butter and a sprinkling of salt in our pre-vegan days, we figured this would be a great vegan replacement.

WRONG!!! It's horrible. It's tart and tangy and overwhelmingly salty, and we only used the tiniest bit to taste. I'm sure there are people who love this stuff, but it won't be making it over the threshold to our home again. Ick. It's a shame too, because this little container was just under $9 at our local Whole Foods.

Peach Cobbler

Jane often gets the urge to bake when it cools down. Our vegan diet has kept that pretty much in check. The first week we were vegans she made the chocolate cake out of the Real Food Daily cookbook. It's amazing what you can do with tofu.

Anyway, the cake cost about $20 to make (and that's not including electricity), and Jane didn't love it, so we haven't had much in the way of prepared desserts. It's mostly been cut up fruit and the occasional soy dessert from Trader Joe's. Nice summer desserts that we really enjoy.

But it's been unseasonably cold here. We're actually experiencing autumn! OK, not a real New England type of Autumn, but there's been a nip in the air and it's great to crawl into bed at night - perfect sleeping weather. So tonight, Jane broke out the vegan cookbooks and made a pear cobbler. Normally I love her cobbler. She's always having to dole it out so I don't eat the whole thing in one night. But I've got to say, this wasn't spectacular. I missed the butter. Or maybe I didn't care for the ginger in this recipe. In any event, this one wasn't a winner, although it looks good!