Kale Hazelnut Lentil Soup

This soup blew my mind. And it was easy. A friend made a soup using some of these ingredients and I added some more that sounded good:

Potato and Spinach Salad, Lemon-Mustard Dressing

This dish is something I ate at a potluck and have been trying to re-create ever since. I have mostly not had luck trying to make up the recipe on the fly. Today I took a little time and came up with something that resembles the original dish.

3 Cubed and boiled potatoes
Fresh spinach leaves
Optional: other veggies that sound good to you

Dressing (whisk together ingredients while potatoes cook):
1/8 Cup olive oil
1/8 Cup Lemon juice
2 tsp stoneground mustard
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 garlic cloved diced or pressed very small
salt and pepper to taste

I cooked and drained the potatoes and put them in the bowl and poured the dressing over them while still hot. Let them sit for a couple of minutes and prepare the spinach to add. I added a large handful of spinach and ripped it into pieces easy enough to eat. I pickled some green beans recently that sound pretty good in this as well as the sliced onion I added.

Sweet Potato Bread

My friend Casey made some homemade ice cream. Even more exciting than the fresh ice cream is its main ingredient: sweet potatoes! After a visit with her this morning, I am the lucky recipient of all of her leftover pureed sweet potato. The internet has shown me that there are many websites dedicated to recipes for leftovers. I think a lot of this is directed towards holiday cooking when we might use things like pumpkin pie filling, cranberries, and in my case sweet potatoes, and then have the remnants that no one wants to eat a couple days later.

And so here I am making bread again. After my modestly successful Honey Oat Bread I guess I am feeling pretty awesome. Awesome enough to attempt a braided bread recipe. How fancy.

The initial mixing was beautiful:
In the bowl is soy milk, honey, pureed sweet potato (with a little yam for coloring), dried thyme, yeast, water and oil.


The next step was adding the liquids to the dry stuff: flours, salt, and some corn meal.

I kneaded the dough to the desirable soft-but-not-sticky consistency and let it rise for 1.5 hours next to my radiator. After doubling, I separated the dough into 6, foot long "ropes" and braided two loaves. They rose for another hour until they were very plump.

In the end they only needed to cook for 35 minutes in the oven until they were golden brown and had that hollow sound when tapped on the bottom. The hollow sound is still something of a mystery to me. I can probably convince myself that any sound coming from the bottom of my loaf sounds "empty". The sweet potato is hardly noticeable in the final product; I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the bread turned out wonderful and even better, beautiful. Braided loafs are great because I get to play with the dough more than I normally would. Imagine the fun shapes my imagination can create! Circles, spiral buns, tricolors!

Warmed and slathered with Earth Balance this bread is a great morning treat.

Tempeh Steak and Potatoes

So last night was a great meal: Tempeh steak, Smashed Potatoes and Asparagus.

Marinade for tempeh:
-1/4 C Tamari Soy Sauce
-1/4 C Rice Vinegar
-1/8 C Water
-1 Tbsp Honey (heaping)
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
-some olive oil
~1/8 tsp of each: ground pepper, chili flakes, cinnamon, ground clove


I cut an 8oz piece of tempeh into thin wedges (about 8-10 pieces) and lightly scored them with a knife. And let them marinade for 2-3 hours, flipping a couple of times. Then cooked them in a non-stick pan until crispy.

For the potatoes I loosely copied the "Crash Hot Potato" recipe from the VeganYumYum blog. I boiled some medium round yellow potatoes until soft. As an experiment in flavor, I used a veggie bouillon cube in the boiling water (it didn't end up making much of a difference). Once soft I put them on an olive-oiled baking sheet and did the "smashing" with the lid of a glass jar. Having a larger surface area to smash with helped keep the potatoes intact instead of crumbly. Spices aplenty (I bet any spice you love on potatoes will do great!) on the top of these some as some more olive oil and then into the oven at 350 for ~20 minutes or until the spuds get a cooked crispy look. When the potatoes were done I added some Earth Balance because it is delicious.


I roasted the Asparagus with olive oil, lemon, and course grain sea salt in the oven at the same time as the potatoes. 10 minutes was all they really needed and I think mine were a little overdone. Still tasty, though.

Most surprising to me was how well the potato complimented the tempeh! I will definitely make this again.

Weekend food

A couple more photos of food that happened this weekend.

Reheated Three Bean Chili with Cornbread and that homemade ginger ale from a couple days ago. I used cilantro for the first time in my recipe and it added great flavor when cooked in my funny red Crock Pot.

I'm still getting the hang of picture-taking and I see, now, that these photos are blurry. Sorry.



Roasted Seasoned Yellow Potatoes. Raw onion is my main squeeze these days so I added that along with avocado, jelepeño and Tapatío hot sauce to the final product. The yellow is nutritional yeast flakes.

Instead of adding seasoning after I place the potatoes on the cooking sheet, I have learned to season them in a bowl first. With the help of olive oil the spices more evenly coat the potatoes.

The pill bottle is one of many that I use to hold spices. They are much better for grab and go cooking than the plastic bags they come in when I buy them from the bulk bins.